“RENTS ARE LOW IN EDEN”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 February 1940, Page 10

“RENTS ARE LOW IN EDEN”

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

By

PETER BENEDICT.

CHAPTER 11. From the corridor, where he had halted to light a cigarette, Adam heard clearly the whir of the telephone as the chairman dialled a number, and the tone, though not the words, of his voice which followed, indubitably pleased with itself. There had been no pause; therefore this was a local number. ‘"Hodgson first,” he though mechanically, exercising his clairvoyance once again, “to share a snigger over the price he got for it; then Beardsley, to protest he could get. no more.” He went slowly down the.well carpeted stairs, and came into the vestibule of the offices of the Council. He was looking round him with the open curiosity he affected where his liking was not engaged, when a woman came in from the sweep of gravel before the doors, the hiss of her steps quick and smooth, as a very young man’s walk, an arresting sound. She looked neither to right nor left, but came withou" haste and without hesitation towards the foot of the stairs, and was face to face with him before she was aware. There was, after, nothing very startling about her. She was not above the medium height, though at first sight he had thought her tall, an impression she owed, he thought, to the erectness of her carriage and. the considerable beauty of that gait of hers. The sound had not over-estimated its visual quality. She walked from the hips, and with a long but very soft stride, so smoothly that her body scarcely rippled as she came; like and the simile cost him a definite mental effort like the incarnation of the countrywoman. And that in itself was enough to hold his mind, for everything else about her might have come straight from Bond Street, or for the matter of that the Rue de la Paix. Her suit and hat were admirably “country” and early autumn, her lowheeled shoes completely in keeping with a lost valley in the hills ten miles or more from town; but the taste which had selected so finely the exact design for place and time had been refined by some other place and many other times. No Court Brandon dressmaker had ever, he was sure, made so correct a Court Brandon dress.

Of more puzzling contradictions still was the expression, of her face as she saw him standing there. He knew he had stared; he often stared, for it was his nature to speculate somewhat too openly upon the things which held its attention; and he had often received in return some such cool, aloof, quelling look as this. But beneath the fashionable hat this face did not either frown or smile, but only looked through him to the furthest corner of

the vestibule, and passed, leaving him as dizzy as if he had seen a ghost; and yet if she had pierced his mind, she had laid bare something of her own also; he had seen trouble in her empty, cold, very beautiful eyes. There are troubles and troubles; this was a real one; bereavement had not more intensity.

; He knew he had seen her before; and for a while, as he passed slowly from the offices into the sunshine, and walked down Castle Lane towards the valley where his colony was, that was all he did know. It was not the cool, clear-cut face he remembered, not the pale amber of her skin, nor the flush of darkest rose over the cheekbones, nor the sleek dark hair, nor the darker eyes in their uncompromising and unrelenting wretchedness. It was something in the heft of her, in the balance of the body which walked with a country gait, and yet wore the elegance of the city as to the manner born; and something in the way she had looked at him, though he did not know what. His was only a business clairvoyance. But when he reached the turn of the road, and glanced along to where the hawthorns met the hollies, and both lay brown and tattered in the dust, he captured the memory in a moment. She was the woman who had come along the lane with her chin upon her shoulder, and run into him as he crossed from his car; the woman in the dark; and that was why his subconscious mind had kept the feeling of her body, and the bold walk she had. rather than any recognisable feature ofi her face. He felt again the touch of her, so light and so instantly recoiling, and yet so vital 'that it had seemed to pass into him. like a tiny electric shock and fill him with a shivering sensitivity. Her eyes had that quality, too. Adam stepped over the fallen twigs, and stood looking thoughtfully down into the ferny sTde of the copse beyond the white gate. The slope was not very great, and yet it seemed to drop away before his eyes, such was the stillness and the peace it had. The timber, he judged, was very old, for the trees had attained an immense size, and many of the boles were lost in moss. The turf itself was as close-grained as moss, and of the dazzling emerald the open fields had lost some three months ago in the first hot sun. In the heart of it ; he heard, but could not see, the water falling, a sound crystal pure. ,

He turned, and went into his own property, and the peace was gone, but his blood quickened to activity around him. He was changing the face of Court Brandon with a vengeance, and changing it at top speed: and everything, from the fierce colour of the sand heaps in the sun to the voices which on all sides chirped ‘Goodmorning’ to him as he passed, conspired to remind him that he was the pivot on which all this erection rested. It was a feeling of which he was sec-' retly fond, though he shared the con-] fessicn with no one. and oven laughed at it to himself.

In the little red-brick office, in the dazzling new and unashamed swivel chair, a very young gentleman sat scribbling, and listening with one car to the strictures of Mickey Dennis, who was scarcely older, than he, ran Adam’s Stanchester office, and ran it, as he himself admitted and Adam did not deny, extremely well. Mickey sat upon the desk, for there was but one chair, and he (lid not fancy it; but he slid to his feet when Adam entered, and reached for the hat he had discarded. “I’ll be getting back to town, Mr Probert, if you don’t want me here. I had to close the office for the morning, as a matter of fact, to come at all; but there were some cases I desperately wanted you to have before you closed on anything. Kenworth has them down now, and I believe he’s captured one or two of his own this morning, locals. What d’you think? Are locals going to be let in, or not?” "Depends on the circumstances,” said Adam, “but I’ll look at them. It may be necessary in some cases.” “I’ll get back, then, shall I? Or can you use me here for today? I wouldn’t mind a day in the country, while the good weather lasts.” “You can stay,” said Adam indifferently. “One day won’t matter to your office. If you like you can go up and look at another piece of ground I’ve just bought, and see what you think can best be done with it. You know the meadow beyond the plough Inn. which carries a few dirty swings, and calls itself the Council Recreation Ground? I’ve bought that, and the two flat fields beside it; and a recreation

ground is what it’s going to be. I want a clubhouse, and a swimming-bath, and tennis courts, and so on—think of as many things as you like, and see how many of them we can fit in. Take Britten up with you, and whatever he says, don’t contradict him; he’ll be right.” Mickey Dennis stood in the doorway, and a smile half sheepish and half honestly amused came and went in his face as he looked at his employer. “Honestly, sir, if you weren’t a millionaire, I’d be getting worried about my quarter's salary. What are you going to buy next? The Council Office?”

“I might, at that,” said Adam, and smiled at the thought. “It isn’t a bad building, that; it’s an idea, Mickey.” “I’d like to see old Washburn’s face,” said the very young gentleman, glancing up for a second from his writing. “So would I; but not again this morning; once is enough for one day. I’ve just come from there.” “What did he say when you made him an offer for these meadows? Thought you wanted them as sites for still more jerry-built houses, I don’t mind betting.” “You’d win. And pretended he'd been planning the same destiny for them.”

“And put you off, or tried to, so that he could ’phone Beardsley, and get tipped off how much extra to put on the price. I knew the gang.” Kenworth knew them very well, for he was a native, and observant. “They don’t publish full reports of their meetings; the dear chairman sees to that. I hope you tied him down."

“I did, and I got what I wanted, at my price. I wont pretend that my price displeased him; it didn't; but I’m hanged if I’ll come down to doing him in preference to being done." He said, with sudden thoughtfulness: “Ah. well, this is one place where they can't do any damage, thank heaven! Get along and look over that place, Mickey. Be back at one. and we’ll have lunch together at the King's Arms. Then we’ll talk about these cases of yours." Mickey departed; from the small window they saw him run across the trodden space between the store-sheds, and disappear behind the night-watch-man’s shelter. I

“I’ve got rather a desperate case out of the village itself, sir,” said Kenworth, hunting among the papers which littered his desk. “You know they've been driving people out of the place, really; there hasn’t been a house built here, except privately, for something like ten years, and I’ve got my eye on several that want scrapping, too. This is a young man, who works in the other direction, out at Kennels beyond Bishop’s Brandon: so of course he can’t take his hook to the town, it would mean a twenty-mile journey every day. and the trains are not only expensive, but confoundedly bad. There’s no cottage for him at the job, and no house here at Court Brandon. He’s in lodgings, sir; been married four years, and there’s a kid." He put down the paper, and looked up at Adam, his eyes large and young and earnest behind the distorting glasses Adam lit a cigarette, and sal down in Mickey’s place upon the corner of the desk. “Fellow come himself?" “Yes, sir." "Like him? Think he's straight?" “Absolutely, sir. It’s the lodging, you see; there’s the devil to pay if the kid makes a noise. And 1 think you ought to know, sir—he's getting fairly good money, and I’m pretty sure he desperately wanted to offer a higher rent than we’re asking to clinch the matter —and he didn’t." “Put him down," said Adam, and slid away to the door to escape the vicarious thankfulness which at once began to exude from the ardent face turned up to his. From the open doorway he . coidd see. in a tantalising nearness still I the tops of the ancient trees in the glen beyond the lane. On an impulse I 1 he turned back to Kenworth, and de-I, manded: 1

<To be Continued.)