[All Eights Reserved.] WHO SEARCH FOR STARS

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 216, 12 September 1925, Page 36

[All Eights Reserved.] WHO SEARCH FOR STARS

, , , I BY MARJORIB 3OWEN. I SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. The story commences by introducing- to ' its readers as one or its principal charac- i ters in the g-arish and uncongenial setting or a hug-e London hotel dancing- nail, ' ! EDMUND COUWOYS, an engineer, re- ! turned from a career abroad, as the in- j heritor or a rortune, seeks to find the ! love or his youth from whom Tor ten years he has been separated. This lady ! ELIZABETH SKALKELD, whose address In i a shabby section of Camberwell is next i clay visited by Courtoys. He there flncis no evidence of her presence save a pile or unopened letters, sent by him during his world wanderings. From this preliminary disappointment in his search, Courtoys waits upon his lawyers, and i there decides to employ detectives to I ilnd the lady. He then goes home to Whethamstede Manor, the Tamily estate, I where he is welcomed biANNE FARDEL, wno with her brother Sebastian, is in temporary possession of the old home. Courtoys is attracted and repelled by Anne's personality, and cani not understand Sebastian, who proTesses I to be greatly interested in a collection or old maps he has round in the Manor House. When they have gone for the night, Courtoys flnds a book, dropped by Anne, the subject or which Is witchcrart and black magic. Anne tries to persuade Courtoys to settle down and live at peace in the T Manor House. One day, arter refusing Anne's request that tie should sell the Manor House, Edmund receives news or Elizabeth, and decides to consult Anne as to the best means or nnding the nilssing lady. CHAPTER XII. Courtoys felt accused of negligence in that he had not thought of this himself; now the task was put before him he found it distasteful. "I supposed that there would be no object—that there is nothing more to find out/ lie said, haltingly. "I don't know," answered Anne. "You could try. Probably there is some little thing you could discover that would be helpful." She put the white cat down and rose. "Wouldn't you try!" she added. Courtoys was spared a reply, for Mrs. Willsett came in with the tea, which looked very pleasant spread out on the homely brown table, not frivolous or coquettish, but decent, comfortable, and friendly. And when Anne made the tea in the big blue teapot with steaming water from the bubbling kettle, Courtoys felt quite childishly and absurdly pleased and happy. Again Courtoya vr&a impressed by the prettiness of this heart-shaped face, as fine, as flawless as porcelain, the pure warm white just flushed -with colour in the cheeks and palely tinted in lips and eyes, for even these were of palest grey, with a blonde lustre like glass; her hair also was a colour so delicate as to be illusive; it could only be compared with ash, with a pale primrose, with some bleached festal silk. In her very plain, rather rough dress there was no attempt to set off her very definite style of beauty, and, though Courtoys knew nothing , at all about such things, he felt that she was deliberately marred and eclipsed by her clothes, andj to some extent, by her surroundings, •which, were cheerful- and pleasant, but not appropriate to her faint pale elegance. •<I wonder why you disliked met" she said, thoughtfully, "but it doesn't matter, does it? We are rather thrown together here, and had better make the best of it —I daresay we shall find it more interesting because we are not likely to get fond of each other." Courtoys wondered if she would ever find anything interesting. "I can't imagine why you aTe here, in a place like this—shut away from everyone," he said.*-* "No," she answered. "I don't euppose that you can. You may be sure," she added, "that there is a sufficient j reason." Her coolness piqued him. "Are you also interested in old maps?" he asked abruptly. "Enormously." She did not flick an eyelid as she answered, but he thought that he detected irony in her quiet tones. "Your brother is up at the Manor House now," he rejoined, "with the maps." . "Ah? then he won't be home to tea, Ehe remarked, casually. "He forgets everything when he is cataloguing." • She leant forward to take his cup, and I he noted the extreme beauty of her wrist and hand, as small and exquisite as that of a young girl; and she was not a girl; despite the flawless face, Courtoys even doubted if she was very young. "I wish you would explain to mc the attraction " of these maps," he eaid, rather irritably. "They always seemed to mc rather childish —and silly—maps made before people knew how to make them." "My brother thinks," said Anne Fardel, "that they, these old map makers, knew more than we suppose they did — he sees, in those fantastic charts, new worlds which he discovers and peoples for himself." Courtoys could not see much sense in that; his thin face expressed kindly amusement as he answered: "1 can't reconcile all that sort of thing jwith reality—it's too opposed to everyi thing one knows." "Not opposed," answered Anne. "H is continued from it —the only obstacle is that you can see but a certain distance that is the difference between all of us —the distance we can see." She rose with her pretty light movements and pointed to the large framed map hanging opposite them. "What can you ccc in that?" she asked. , . ~ -j . He saw a green island in the midst of curly blue waters full of mermaids and sea monsters. There was a port with big three-masted ships at anchor, tropic plants dotted over the island, some houses, castles, a. savage, and a tent, and several men in the dress of the seventeeth century. [ ' \s Courtoys gazed, incredulous of any impression as he was, he did yet become aware of a certain danger, grotesque but personal, life in the thing; it, seemed a transcript of what had actually happened, and what had actually been felt. "One of the early explorers' maps of the East Indies," remarked Anne. "You can find something in it if you choose." Courtoys could not quite follow her; he frowned at the map, then down at his steaming boots and leggings. "What have you, with your belief in realities, been doing all your life?" asked Anne, suddenly. ( "Sticking to realities," he answered, trying to earn a livelihood, to get on, te make enough to come home and marry Elizabeth." ElSbeth? 11 aU T<mr PainS yOH lOSt

I "That -wasn't my fault," came his halfj hearted protest. "I toiled away for ten j years, it -wasn't much of a life. I daresay she had as much fun as I did, after j all." j "There "was too much toil, too much pains, too much labour and struggle," remarked Anne. "And for what object? Just for a common place little marriage." Courtoys -winced at that, but he knew (that there had been very little glory about his poor romance. J That -was -why it had all been so dull iand dreary—because there was just the ' ordinary ending ahead of him, even if he ihad been successful. Just a tired little governess and some cramped suburban home—that was all there had ever really been before Edmund Courtoys. And now things werq different. With his fortune, with the loss of Elizabeth, with the possession of his house, and the meeting with this woman, things had become different. She was right after all about the maps. You could feel as if you were on that curdled blue sea, voyaging round those faery coasts. "There is an old tag I read the other, day," said Anne, "that would just do for you— 'They take more pains who look for pins Than they who search for stars.' Now, isn't that true of you ? r Haven't you been picking up pins all your life?" ; "Yes," admitted Courtoys; be was looking at the map, and his voice was quite excited: "that is quite true." "Give it up," she suggested. "Have done with it—search for stars instead." Then she nodded almost instantly: "I have to go to town this week. I will come with you. if you like, to that shop in Cambenvell. to see what we can discover about Elizabeth." I CHAPTER XIII. "They take more pains who look for pins Than they who search for stars."' , —Old Play. It was Anne who, with considerable _ adroitness, managed the rather sullen, j hostile woman in the dreadful little newst paper shop, and got, Courtoys felt, far more out of her than he would have been able to do. For the ambient -was so distasteful to him, so permeated with gloom and mean . poverty and sordid labour, that he felt i no desire beyond that of getting away J from the place. r But Anne was patient and perseverl ing, and finally roused the woman to a sort of dull interest in the affair and a 5 kind of zest in her own garrulity. r Here in these wretched surroundings t she seemed something very fine and ele--1 gant, even her plain clothes achieved a certain richness of effect, and her beauty 5 was undeniable, as complete as it was 3 uncommon. i He admired, too, the way she man--1 aged her 6elf-imposed task, guarding * Elizabeth, as it were, from the imper- » tinent curiosity of the shopkeeper, and r taking away much of the ugly nature i of this probing into someone else's 1 affairs. i "I've got this," the shop woman suddenly announced, "not that it will be 3 any use to you. I found it 'ere, among r a lot o' rubbish. > From a drawer in the confined muddled ' space behind the counter she drew out 3 a soiled square of cardboard, on which r some carefully printed letters Uiad been written on ruled lines. * It was laid on the counter before r Anne and Courtoys, between the dirty i jare of gluey sweets and the array of 6 j garish-coloured penny weeklies, and they read: — a "Lessons Given in French, German, t Drawing, and the Piano. t 2/6 per hour. Apply: Miss Elizabeth Skalkeld, r 17, Myrtle Grove." Two holes had been bored in the top and a fragment of string inserted. "She got mc to 'ang it in the winder, which I obliged with, not wot it did 'er ', much good; there ain't many round l these 'ere parts as wants to learn them thinge." Courtoys did not speak. ■ To him this relic of Elizabeth was as painful as some miserable memento of the unhappy dead. • 'Only- too well could he ccc her, the . gentle, timid woman, seated in her squalid bedroom, anxiously writing out, . with trembling care, this pathetic card. She must have been in great poverty, very friendless and desperate. -< > And Courtoys, with a sick sensation j of fear, wondered what could have happened, for Elizabeth, who always kept [ her places, had such excellent refer- . ences, was so docile and well behaved, , to have come to such straits. ■ "You might give that to mc," he heard \ Anne , say gently. "It is some little rer membrance of my friend." "I'm sure I don't mmd —ain't no use . to mc," replied the woman, with a short , laugh. i "t suppose you have nothing else at ; all?" s "No. miss, nothing." "And you couldn't possibly recollect - the postmarks on any of the envelope??" . "That I couldn't, and it's not to be - expected, seeing what else I 'aye to do, r I that it ain't. London they mostly was. 5 i that I can tell you. and nothing else."' j Anne folded the poor card in two and i [placed it in her ba-g. r\ She glanced kindly at the downcast jfar-e of her companion. ; i "I don't think that we can find out ■janything else," she suggested. I Courtoys roused himself. t "I suppose we can't." he answered, j "With an effort he turned to the shop * woman, who waited, a little truculently, * I behind her dirty counter. j "Did the lady seem in any trouble?" - he asked. "You see. something happened IJ that I—that we—can't understand. I When I last saw her she was—quite ; comfortable, well looked after—happy." "That was a long time ago. wasn't t it?" asked the woman with the course ; callousness of her class. "She was in t trouble orl right, didn't know where , to turn for a sixpence, as you might ? say: said she'd come down to this, but I that's allus the tale, ain't it ? Wanted * to know once, she did, ii she couldn't 'elp mc in the shop, just for 'er keep and T 'arf a crown a week, but I couldn't feed i another mouth, and she wasn't much t use. either." i "Was she ill?" asked Courtoys faintly. This stream of rough words had . rushed over him like a drench of icy, i bitter water. "I didn't know that jshe were iiy rei plied the woman, unmoved, "only weak like, wot 'appens if you don't get enough ; to eat, and worry, and that party ; sue were lodging with weren't no Christian—bad's "er cookin' and bad's 'er I "Why did she stay?" asked Courtoys.. frantically. , The woman looked at him contemptu- . ously. ■ ._ "You don't know London, do you? she asked. "Been away in the back- , woods too long, haven't yer? Wofs a woman to do in London now? Swarms of 'em there are, and no -work for em ' to do, end no men for 'em to marry

—and them fine laxly type don't etand a dog's chance—for," the dreadful •woman added with awful meaning, "there's many a thing a good-looking girl can do that Miss Shalkeld would never "aye done. You could see that by the look of 'cr —and there was only one thing she could 'aye done, and did do, according to my 'umble opinion." "Hush!" murmured Anne quickly. But Courtoys demanded fiercely: "What is that?" "Asking your pardon, suicide." He had known that she would cay that word, yet he must provoke her to utter it! He turned away with a clouded face, and sought for the handle of the halfglass door. But Anne, with a light gesture, detained him. "I know that my friend, that Miss Shalkeld," she said with assurance, with even a slight smile, "would not do that." And she spoke with such confidence that Courtoys was for a second persuaded that she had really known Eliza- ; beth. The woman, feeling rebuked, became ■ defiant. ' "Well, I don't see as anyone could answer for anyone else on a matter o' 1 that kind —where 'as she gone if she ain"t at the bottom of the river? Them ; detectives couldn't find "er, and they was sharp enough.' , "You may be sure,"' said Anne gently, 5 that they thought of suicide, and have searched in that direction also." : The shopkeeper laughed harshly. "You mean that she weren't found? What about them as is never found? You may depend on it that if Eomeone *■ disappears from these parts they've done 1 away with themselves." " "You never will," said Anne, with her air of quiet conviction, "persuade us ol that, and now I think there is no more to be said, save to thank you for your trouble." She touched Courtoys on the arm. and he, understanding, took from his ! pocketbook some money, and laid it on > the grimy counter. The woman gathered it up. with, howr ever, but little softening of her manner, 1 and the two disappointed inquirers were leaving the shop when a sudden and 5 rather curious impulse came to Cour--1 toys. "One moment," he said, with some ■ T authority, turning back again. "Can >ou tell me,'l think tha , ; y.u must be able ■ to tell mc, how Miss Skalkeld looked? 1 Some description of her appearance, of 1 her dress, of her manner?" The woman, impressed by his earnest--5 ness was silent, not quite comprehending - his meaning, and Courtoys, wLo still held i in his hand the pocket-book from which ' he had taken •'he money the woman had s just Bwept into the till, took out the faded photograph he had shown Anne in - the train, and held it out across t!ie I counter. "j.i.<it is how she looked I saw I her last," he added. "Was she much » changed?" j Eager curiosity now lit up the shop woman's apathy; ehe stared at the - photograph, then looked from Courtoys » to Anne with a glance suspicious and ; cunning. "Why 'aye you been making gime o' { mc orl this time?" she asked. "That I ain't the young woman, that ain't Miss l Skalkeld." , "Was she as changed ac all that?" exclaimed Courtoys. , "Changed! It ain't the same person, r couldn't be—this woman were a dark ■ f thing, with l6ts o' black 'air—there ain't r a feature the same." (To be continued daily.)