“RENTS ARE LOW IN EDEN”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 February 1940, Page 16

“RENTS ARE LOW IN EDEN”

PUBLISHED BY

SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

COPYRIGHT.

By

PETER BENEDICT.

CHAPTER H. Catherine had meant to go sliaight home, but when she came to the lane at the further end of the building area, and saw the gates of her own glen shining pale in the moonlight some hundred yards away from her, she could not resist the impulse to look at it again.

She passed along the little stretch of lane which separated her from it. On her right hand, beyond the green hedge of alders, the ground fell away to the hollow valley which was her one valuable possession; on her left the once tall hawthorns had been torn up by the roots with tractors. Much of the hedge lay in great heaps where it had been gathered from the lane, shadowy black now in the night. She saw, across the aching emptiness where the tall bushes had been, the watchman’s fire again, and the silver glint of the corrugated iron store shed beyond it. She turned and went in through the 'white gate. Green shadows, interspersed with patches of moonlight, astonishingly silver, made a paved pathway before her feet. She walked between ferns waisthigh, on turf soft and springly with the feeding of centuries of leaf-mould; and above her the arching of the trees met like the moulded roof of the church. In the heart of tnis quiel there was a music, where the stream tumbled in a cascade from a thirtyfoot slide of moss-grown rocks polished and slimy with years into the foaming rim of a large pool. But the pool itself opened out beyond silver and bland, filled from above with moonlight, as by day it had sunshine while the rest of the dingle lay in shadow. It was surrounded on every side by willows, whose leaves trailed here anct there in the water; but because it was. too large to be shadowed by its trees it remained the most happy of waters, remote in a sort of shining peace, with nothing sinister in its loneliness. Catherine’s past seemed to her just then to lie like a series of wrecks along the green shores. There was not a spot anywhere in the hollow which was not peopled by herself and some whom she had valued. She had played there in her childhood, had brooded there in her adolescence, had been courted there had—the one thing for which she could not. be grateful—consented to marry Geoffrey there, in just that angle of rock where the willow stopped so low in its reflection.

“Only marry me,” he had said, “and you’ll love me some day. I’ll make you love me. I’ll make you so happy that you’ll have no choice.” So she had married him; and they had been fond of each other with a completeness as beautiful as it was unsatisfying. He had not made her love him. She did not know why, for the form of love had been there, and cnly the last living spark had evaded them. And now Geoffrey was dead, eighteen months ago; and she was home again, healed of the injuries received in the motor accident which had destroyed him.

Presently she turned back up the ferny path. She latched the gate carefully behind her, and walking for a pace or two with her chin on her shoulder, she collided, but gently, with a man who had just alighted from a car opposite the uprooted stretch of the hedge. An impersonal arm went out instinctively to support her and yet never touched her. There were eyes she supposed an artist would call good, rather deep-set, wide apart but not too wide, full-coloured and thoughtful, and quite beyond classification. There was a mouth long, and hard, and fine; a face of broad and sparsely-covered bones.

Intense details, there, to remember of a man after one so brief contact by moonlight; and she was not even sure that she had seen them, that they had not been stamped into her consciousness by some more subtle method. “I beg your pardon!” he said in a low, hurried, but very even voice; and that was all. He was stepping over the brushings of debris from the hawthorn hedge; and she was standing in the lane looking after him. Voices roused her. Two men were coming along the lane together, and the nearer of them was the jobbing gardener who tended Perrys roses. She hailed him.

“Jordan! It is you. isn’t it, Tom?” “Well. now. Mrs Court, I’m glad to see you home again. It’s a fine long while since you left us. How long have you been back?”

“I only came tonight, Tom.” She was not looking at him. With head poised she started after the owner of the car. “Tom. do you know who that man is? Sec. there ho is, talking to the watchman by the brazier. He drove up in this car. and I wondered—strangers in Court Brandon are rare."

“Of course, ma’am,” said the gardener, looking where she pointed. “Only he isn’t a stranger to us now, so much but of course you wouldn't know about him, after being away so long." “Why, who is he?’

The man who’s having all these houses built. His name’s Probert— Adam Probert.” CHAPTER HI.

The hands of the Chairman of Court Brandon District Council turned and turned a paper-knife upon the edge of his desk.

Interesting hands he had. but not for the qualities which were in them so much as for those they lacked: plump and white, with little dimples at the knuckles, hands which had never wor- 1 ked in their life with any tool larger/ than a pen, hands which could noil keep still while he discussed business J but must be for ever shifting, shifting

To be Continued.)

with an unpleasant implication, for though Mr Councillor Washburn had no reputation for dishonesty, there was no denying that he shifted’ as the wind blew, and with many winds there were many Washburns. He was sixty-odd, and of a benevolent countenance; a man who knew how to get and how to keep popularity. Adam Probert stood by the window, where the air was fresh and scented with the individual spice of Court Brandon;- he identified it as a compound of lime blossom and mown grass before the moisture had left it. He watched the twisting hands, and his long fine mouth smiled, and he felt, perhaps unpardonably, distinctly grateful that he had Councillor Washburn safely tied up in black and white and sealed with his own signature. "Of course,” said the chairman, “we shall have some opposition to the sale of this site. It was marked down, you will understand, for housing purposes under our own schemes; but unfortunately the Council cannot proceed for financial reasons.

“I’m told there are Government terms for housing loans in districts like this,” said Adam Probert, and smiled again. “1 know your two members have been raising Cain for years about the way people were being driven into town from these villages, simply because there were no houses being built to accommodate them. But two or three councillors can’t wake the dead though they shout their heads off; and didn’t one of them get thrown out at the last election by the by? Not, of course, that his politics are any business of mine; but he wasn’t a bad fellow in his noisy way.”

“He meant well,” said the chairman nervously; he found Mr Probert too well-informed in the affairs of the local Council. “However, as I was saying, our plans have had to be narrowed considerably for lack of funds; and we count ourselves very lucky to have caught the interest of such a man ar yourself, a man of vision, if I may say so. The development of Court Brandon on such a scale as you contemplate should be not only a public service, but——” He waved his smooth dimpled hand, but the sufficiently diplomatic phrase escaped him.

“But a paying proposition,” said Adam Probert, who had no use for diplomacy, at least at this moment, and moreover, enjoyed the start which went over the bland features, the distaste, and the laboured smile of deprecation which followed it. “At least shall we say—easily practicable? The labourer is worthy of his hire, Mr Probert.” He noted with relief that Adam was beginning to glance at his watch; he did not like this much to clairvoyant man. “You are, in fact, just the tonic which we’ve needed in this place; and we’re doubly fortunuatc to have encountered a person whom we can trust so implicitly. In other circumstances, you comprehend, it would be our duty to supervise the plans very carefully before sale, and also keep a —’er, fatherly eye, shall we say—upon the proceedings during the construction. But I need not say that you relieve us of all further misgivings on that score,” “In the case of this strip of ground,” said Adam coolly, turning his fine eyes from the beguiling sky outside the window with reluctance, for the day tasted of river picnics rather than bricks and mortar, you won’t be put to the necessity even of wondering. 1 haven’t bought your children's recreation ground, unofficial though it is, to build houses on it.”

"Then may I ask—. It was sold, you understand, on the consideration that it was to be used for the public good.” It was a fine phrase, and from long practice, he uttered it with an imposing fluency: Adam thought his slightly broad “u’s" almost improved the effect.

“So it is, or at least I believe I can call it so. If you're interested, there’s going to be a library, a swimming bath —with an attendant —tennis courts, swings, see-saws, and anything else I can think of adding by the time we’ve reached that stage. A gymnasium, perhaps; I’ve no doubt they’d like one. Is that a satisfactory explanation?” “Most satisfactory, of course; but I had no idea ”

"Neither had I until I spent a day watching them play cricket on a glorified rubbish heap. I'rn afraid this plot of ground wonu run to a cricket field, but at least we’ll find them something to do instead: and later we must see about finding a pitch; there must be plenty of good fields going idle.” He picked up his hat and gloves from the desk; the paperknife, impelled by a particularly nervous spasm of the plump fingers, fell to the floor. "I'm obliged to you for giving mo such a prompt sale, at any rate. Mr Washburn. I'm afraid I’ve been a nuisance.”

“Not at all, not at all. You must know that I’m deeply interested in your plans, Mr Probert —very deeply interested. I’m at your service whenever you want help or advice, remember." He rose from his chair in a great hurry to bow Adam out and be done with him: his face was not so amiable when the door had closed between them, though it carried a certain irresolute smile of self-congratulation still, lie pulled out a silk handkerchief. arid wiped Adam Probert from his fat hands. They ware not fond of each other.