RENTS ARE LOW IN EDEN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 228, 9 July 1941, Page 7

RENTS ARE LOW IN EDEN

fi By PETER BENEDICT.

:: (Copyright).

A Story of Lawsuit and Romance.

CHAPTER XIV. AN INTRUDER IN EDEN The warning that the case might bo pushed forward into the Michaelmas term had moved Catherine to call up Massihgham, and pass on the hint to him. He had not much comfort to offer to her on that score. He promised to hold back for ,ns long as he could, and with that she had to bo content. The fight was on, and she knew it, and was glad of it. It was flattering to know that she was taken seriously, and by so formidable a man. Mrs Dunstan had found for her, by luck father than judgment, not the letter which Had excited her first by its possibilities, but the one which followed it, giving the same explanation of the Holly Lane joke which Mr Hart had given. Her chances seemed instantly doubled; it was as if Geoffrey’s ghost fought beside her. She took this letter, and the note of agreement on which her claim mainly rested, to Stauchester with her on a day towards the end of September, a day of rain and scudding wind, which rustled the skirts of her plain blue raincoat as she went. She was unhappy, and did not know why. It was perhaps nothing more than the age-old sorrow that autumn had comp to despoil her green altars. But she knew only that the little raw, red roofs below in the meadows, jetting smoke now from several chimneys, had ceased to be the mainspring of her trpuble, and were only the scars of some deeper and more primeval sickness with which her soul was stricken. She looked at them, and pondered distantly upon the human beings who dwelt under them who were tending the ravaged soil into small, square gardens and putting up brave, flaunting curtains at the bay-windows, and building fires in compact kitchen ranges whore once her lime trees had grown as proud and lovely as fairy women, filled with an overwhelming fragrance of blossom and an unceasing music of bees. ‘'Without rest or remorse she hated them, the houses and their creator. There was no power in her great enough to overcome that hate. Tlie first two houses, the block near est her own glade, had been occupieq for more than a fortnight, the next two for some ten days; and now more tenants were moving in with almost every day, as the workmen withdrew themselves from house after house; and here and there prams were appearing under the parlour window's, aud ambitious' attempts were being made to level the soil for the laying of lawns. Here and there, as she passed, she heard the restless wireless for ever playing dance music, monotonous and out of place, having no relationship to the valley, speaking no language she or her trees or rivers could understand. All of it good and useful, without doubt, but all of it. alien in Court Brandon. It was cruelty to ask either of those elements to accept the other. It was demanding the impossible. At the crossroads she hesitated. She had plenty of time in which, to roach the station before her train was due; and she felt a painful curiosity to see closely the true centre of 4 c l am Hvo- % bert’s Eden. She turned to the right, therefore, along the lane, and walked through the centre of the new garden city. Tlie houses, judged as houses, were not bad-looking; but it was the trade of such contractors to make their houses presentable. She glanced at the first house as sne passed. The curtains at the bay window were green and fresh, and there was a pram upon the gravel beneath the sill, shining in virgin newness. The hood was half raised, to keep off the wind, though it was not yet cold; but the drifts of wind were growing erratic now, and blowing drops of rain inward under the sheltering jut of the window; and even as Catherine passed, the mother ■was hurrying out from the front door to take baby and pram into the house. She stood on one foot to kick off the brake, a slim little creature, braced against the rough breeze with straight hair streaming over her face; tossed her head to free her eyes, and was just in time to see Catherine’s slender, erect back, in the plain blue waterproof, receding in the direction of the station. She launched a shout, after her, in the High, swift, thin voice which belongs to the town by right: “Oh, nurse! Just a minute- Nurse HayCs!” In the undulating tones which carry against wind. Catherine heard, and knew that the call could not he meant for her; but she turned obediently, none the less, for apart from herself the stretch of roaa ahead was empty. The little woman came up, panting. “Oh, my word, nurse, you gave mo a start! You are early to-day! I nearly—’' She stopped, her smile fading blankly at sight of Catherine’s unfamiliar face. She stammered: “Oh, I’m very sorry. I’vo made a mistake. 1 took you for Nurse Hayes! I’m that sorry I’ve bothered you. You see, it’s the coat—she always wears a coat just like yours—and she comes tins way every Tuesday, on her way to the station —” , ... “Yes,” said ■Catherine, smiling, 1 know Nurse Hayes quite well. She attends a clinic in tho poor part of btanchester on Tuesdays. X don t wonder you made the mistake; we’re much or a build.” , “You are, too!” agreed tho girl, smiling in response. “I never Joiew • von till you turned round v Only, yon see, I was looking out for Nurse Hayes, because she said if I wanted any errand done in town—something i wouldn’t want to post, yoit know she d do it for mo when she goes on luesdays.” ~ “And there is something?” said Catherine. , The girl flushed; and in sober truth she was no more than a girl, perhaps twenty or twenty-one year old, ana small and thin oven for that, with pale arms like a and a skin whiter than even town life justified. “Well, I. expect I shall see Tsurso come along just now,” she said, a shade nervously. . . , , “But couldn’t 1 do it for you? Just in case? I daresay you know of me; my name’s Court—Catherine Court. J m ■ going into town myself, and I d be glad to get anything you want.” “Oh, but I couldn’t lot you,” said the girl, staring. “It’s awfully nice oi you, Mrs Court, hut after calling you back this way, too —oh, no, I couldn t ronlly. J >• “But, please, I’d like to help. What is it Nurse Hayos was to dor* “Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind, said the little creature, visibly bright-

emng, “and it won’t be no trouble—” “Not an atom! I shall have all day.” “Well, it was just some stuff I got for a frock for my lit-le girl, and I was going to send it to my mother to make up. She’s very good "with cutting out, my mother is, and I’m not much of a hand. Would you cpme inside for a moment, while I fetch the stuff ? I shan’t be making you miss a train, shall I?”

Catherine went in, on her light, quick heels. It was the strangest thing that, she should be there, in one of Adam’s houses, talking to one of Adam’s l tenants, while the letter and note which were to help to build a dam across his path burned in her handbag. She was brought, with shy pride, into a parlour not so small as she had expected, whore a fire burned merrily in a low grate. The furniture was sparse, and cheap, but not without taste, and there were green loose covers like curtains, perhaps from the hand of the mother in Stanchoster, and quite a lew books “Nice, isn’t it ” said the girl, eager and shy at her shoulder. “I mean the place. But there, you’ve lived in it all your life, I daresay, and you’re used to it. I’d never been here till we moved in, and I was that miserable, I didn’t know what to expect, but Harry said I should like it when. I got here; and I do, too, I wouldn’t go back to town now, not lor anything. Did you ever see anything so lovely as all those trees? All the clours of the rainbow!” And on that note, on that strange echo, she chose to vanish into tho back part of tho house in search of the material for her baby’s frock, leaving Catherine suddenly at bay, as if for tho first time sho had realised how great was her adversary. In a minute or two she was back, with a little roll of tissue paper in her hand, which she unrolled to show an edge of cheap silk, a pale blue ground sprigged with deeper blue flowers.. “That’s it! Isn’t it pretty? I didn’t ought to buy silk really, and I don’t like babies dressed up too much, but this was a remnant from Hardy’s sale, and I couldn’t help buying it, it did look so pretty. Baby’s eighteen months old, nearly. She’s asleep now, but you can see her.” She turned down the cover with a stealthy hand* and Catherine saw a baby, lying upon a pillow as white as milk, herself as scrupulously kept, and almost as blanched, a darkhaired little ercaturce, well-formed, but fragile, with her fists doubled under her chin. It struck her that something in this.house, something m this household, was strangely tragic. She said, steadily enough, but in a sudden panic of the soul: “I’m afraid i must hurry off now, or I really shall miss tho train. Where am I to take this?”

“Well, I’vo just written it down for you. I’m afraid it’s a bit out of tho city part, and perhaps not too easy to find. Nurse Hayes. worked quito close, you see. Perhaps, i didn’t ought to let you bother ” “Oh, of course!” said Catherine, smiling, as she took the slip of paper. “I shall find the place all right Mrs—” “Dunning’s my name—Nancy Dunning., Thank you ever so much, Mrs Court.”

The door closed upon Catherine slowly, almost reluctantly. She walked on between the peopled houses, between the few which stood finished but still empty, between the many which wero still in the hands of the armies ot bricklayers, and plasterers,, and painters and carpenters • and continually her eyes went from their raw newness which so deeply agonised her, to the tiny packet she carried in her hand, and back again.

What or who ware they, these people, Mrs Dunning and her kin? Catherine had seen the blazing pallor before, among pottery workers, the opaque and glistening whiteness of china and clay. l There were potteries on the north side of Stauchester among the poorer quarters ; what people would call the slums. Was that where Mrs Dunning had got her pallid face? Then perhaps she had married well, for the parlour houses with bay windows wero not, as a rule, for kiln labourers.

Lost in her haze, she did not glanco at the store-shed as it loomed wot and shining between the houses, nor tho compact shape of Kenwortli’s office tucked under its side. But Adam and Kenworth, standing within at the window, saw her pass. v Kenworth looked sidelong at his chief and said no word; but lie observed a faint cloud, not so much of dislike or antagonism as of intense interest, settle upon the alert face. It did not disturb him with the personal anxiety it would have started in Mickey Dennis. Adam was for ever violently and imperiously interested in something or other, and Kenworth had not the knowledge of him to be able to differentiate. Nor was be able to follow tho struggle which went on behind those shrewd eyes before Adam turned away and plunged hack into the business of the day. Catherine boarded her iram v In her third-class compartment she unfolded the little roll of silk, and the slip of paper which was wrapped into it, and read the address of Mrs Dunning’s mother. “Mrs Garland, 29a, Howards’ Plea,sauce, Gallowshields Road.’’

She had never seen or heard of it, but that was in no way wonderful, for Stauchester was a large town, and harboured here and there many jutting districts which had grown round industries. But she thought it could not be among the poorer quarters, for tho poorer ouarters, for the term “Road” was uncommon except in the more comfortable suburbs, and “Howards’ Pleasauce” sounded just the kind of pretentions title of a builder or converter of suburban property might bestow upon bis creation. Probably one of the fairly new working-class districts towards the north-west. She wondered what! name the Council, or Adam himself, would finally bestow upon the finished product of his genius. “Probert’s Pleasance” would sound good, sho thought, a fitting title for tho colony. None tho less, the simple little mother and the milk-white baby troubled her mind oddly, insistently, all through the half-hour’s journey into Stauchester; and they were still in her thoughts when sho stepped out of the train’on Platform 6 and Lyddon Strang stepped forward in the same moment to meet her, as ever immaculate, as ever restrained, even in his most possessive moments; and as he always had been, and as be always would bo, polos apart from the magnificent unreality her heart coveted.

(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 property.