A LOVE STORY.

Otago Witness, Issue 4030, 9 June 1931, Page 73

A LOVE STORY.

By

H. E. Bates.

Christina Verney was seventeen when I fell in love with her. She used to live in those days with her parents ax a small white dairy shaded by a tall, green sycamore that grew in the churchyard, and we used to go on long walks together’ to take butter to outlying cottages. She was a small,- demure, delicate creature. She reminded one of a primrose, and she was so shy that for a long time I-hesitated to declare what I felt for her.

, One warm, blue afternoon in July we took two baskets and walked over a stretch of meadow-land and through a wood to a solitary house beyond, where we were to buy cherries for her mother. It was not until we emerged from the wood into the sunshine that we saw the house we had gone to visit, resting among its bright-coloured flowers and beehives like an aged woman on a stick sleepy and bowed, with the shadows of a grove of cherry-trees falling over its yellow walls and its dark red threshold.

The whole world was hot and still. A few frightened blackbirds rose screeching from the cherry-trees, red With fruit, but Unnetted, as Christina rail into the garden, I followed slowly with the white baskets, hanging backward a little, wondering who we were going to see. ;

Christina stood for one moment at the doorway. She was dressed all in pale, shining green, and there was something so fresh and delicate: about her-that I could not take my eyes away from her. I saw her lean forward and watched with envy a little white kitten come and caress lier feet with its nose. She spoke to someone, and then disappeared, while I ; waited in the drowsy garden, thinking of her. Presently she reappeared and called to me: “Come in! Don’t be shy! ” And . simultaneously an unknown masculine voice, old and croaking, repeated:. “ Yes, come in, young man, 'come in! ’’ I entered the house through the low doorway arid passed into a tiny room beyond. There, in one corner, his head resting on a window-ledge set out prettily with pink and white geraniums, and a solitary rich blue gloxinia, an old man was sitting. He. was dressed simply brown corduroy trousers- and a faded blue shirt, without a jacket. Round his neck was tied a crimson neckerchief. He seemed disabled and did not get up, but contemplated me dreamily for some moments, never moving his massive, simple features. At last he nodded, smiled, held out his hand, and as 1 shook it, called out in a heavy, guttural voice:

“Mary Ann! Mary Ann! Fanny’s girl come for her cherries! ” There was a brief silence, during which I gazed at Christina again. But suddenly through a door behind her, I saw a woman appear. She came noiselesly, thin, frail, yellow-skinned, dressed all in black except for a silver brooch at her throat. Her pale- melancholy eyes could hardly raise themselves to look at me, and they fell almost instantaneously again to the little lace bobbin, on which she seemed to be threading beads of turquoise and amber with a silver wire quivering in her long pale fingers. After a moment she saw Christina. “ Cherries,” she broke out, a little fearfully. " You’ve come for the cherries ? But not this afternoon? You don’t mean to-take them away? ” Our coming had excited her and her voice began to waver: “ We’ve none gathered. Won’t you leave your basket and come again?” she said.

“ To-morrow ? ” we suggested. “To-morrow’s Sunday? Yes, tomorrow.” Sitting down, she gave me a look of relief and tried to go on threading the blue and amber beads again. As if something were on her mind, however, her fingers grew idle and she kept looking at each of us in turn, and I knew she was aching to speak. At last she managed to whisper: “ It would have been different if Elijah had been here. You see, you should have had them then. You see, Saturday afternoon he’d have been free, and up the trees before you could speak.” I nodded. Immediately, as if, in response to this gesture, she ran into the other room. Before she returned the other figure among the geraniums strained forward and pulled at. my sleeve. There was suddenly an air of excitement. In the succeeding moments the old man began relating, rapidly and fitfully, some story which the woman came and interrupted with her small, quavering voice and rendered incoherent. I could only gather that they were talking about their son.

At last the woman brought out a photograph, dusting it zealously with her long sleeve. He had . been a shoesmith, and the portrait depicted him standing by the side of a beautiful black mare. Both man and horse were enormous, handsome creatures. The woman dropped her bobbin in the excitement of pointing out that the strong white arms of the man were as thick as the forelegs of the beast. She began to heap on me documents, certificates, yellow cuttings from newspapers, red and crimson ribbons, medals, and a silver cup, all relating to him. “ They couldn’t touch him. He was a masterpiece. But you see that, don’t you? They used to carry him home after the championship was over. He always won. No one couldn’t touch him.”

The old man, half-laughingly, halfcrying, put into my hands another photograph in a heavy gilded frame. “ There he is again. See him? . That’s him. Cocking there in the front row with all the cavalry officers. He used to shoe all their horses. They liked him that much they treated him just like one of themselves.”

And they continued. After a little time,. however, I felt their tone change, and presently they spoke of his death. They spoke heavily, with regret, but also as if challenging me to deny that for him death had been something noble and glorious. He had been kicked one night by a ferocious horse at the camp, and had died without seeing them again. As they were talking, I became conscious, suddenly, of a shadow over the doorway, and, looking up, noticed a figure there. With her face half turned to us, her sturdy arms holding before her a basket of mellow gooseberries, stood a dark-haired girl of twenty-five or six, watching and listening. The grave dreaminess of her face, the unbroken silence, 'her apathetic pose arrested me by their air of mystery. The resignation of her small white face, never stirring, never changing its expression of dumb meekness, troubled me. So she stood, for a long time a mere object, like the shadow she cast in the doorway, until site silently vanished without having uttered a word. Soon after she had disappeared, we rose and departed to. Their last earnest, apologetic words were called after us ■ as we crossed the. garden: “If he’d have been here you could have had them, like shot, you see, while you waited. But you come to-morrow They’ll be ready then! ” . We entered the wood, traversing the green, half-sunlit, riding in silence. The heaviness of the summer air under the oak trees, and the pure and delicate presence of the girl at my side, made me forget the house we had left behind The desire to express my admiration and love for her drove away all others But presently, speaking in an incredulous tone, she remarked:

“ What a fool that son was. A drunkard—drunk night after night. The cavalry officers ruined him. But they'll hear nothing against him. They still believe he was kicked to death by a horse, but everyone knows he drove home drunk and was pitched out and broke his neck.”

And as we talked about him, and of the blind, pitiful faith of the parents, the opportunity to express what I felt for her slipped past again. We returned to the house on the following afternoon. Again the July sunshine was warm and tranquil,, again there lingered the same sense of peacefulness, and the house looked as asleep behind its flowers and cherry-trees; once more the old man, his head among the geraniums, sat hunched and staring, and his wife answered his call in the same silent, timid way. The cherries were ready. Christina put the money into the woman’s wrinkled yellow hand. While we were waiting for her to return with the change, the man bent forward and seized my sleeve. “ We forgot to show you this,” he said. He held out a riding whip. A smile of pleasure and pride came over his face. The whip-lash was twisted about the handle, which was handsomely bound and mounted with silver, and the leather was fresh and dry, and the silver brightly polished. The whip had never been used. I took it from him, and simultaneously he broke out, in the same half-proud, half-weeping voice as before: “ The officers of the cavalry made him a present of it on his birthday. You see, they treated him like one of themselves.” The woman -returned. And again they poured out for us the story of their son. They repeated it like a catechism, droning, unaltered, with the same gestures, the same photographs, the same ribbons and medals, until it became unendurable to hear this reiteration of sadness and glory. •And then, as I still held the whip, I became conscious once again that the

dark-haired girl had appeared in the doorway. 1 glanced up at her. She was watch ing me. The expression on her face was gloomy and intense. Its grave dreaminess had gone, her body had lost its apathy and I saw that her hands were clenched against her black dress. They were clenched rigidly, with an intensity and angry bitterness which gradually passed over her whole frame until it possessed her lips and cheeks and rushed into her dark eyes, which she swung rapidly backwards and for wards from my own to the whip, and from the whip to the garrulous lips of the woman and her husband. Once or twice she started. And then gradually the anger consumed her utterly, until she looked as though each word and each memory maddened and sickened her. At last there swept over her face a spasm of impatient fury, as if she thought the repetition of each word maudlin and hollow, as if she longed to snatch the whip from my hands and lash out for ever their blind, foolish faith in him, and beat into them at last the truth of his degradation and death I gave back the whip into the old man’s hands, and she could see it no longer, and when I looked up again her anger was already dying, her hands hung loose against her dress, and gradually, as her anger had done, a strange tranquillity possessed her, and after giving me one indefinable look of stoicism mingled with sadness, as if she were struggling against tears, she slipped away.

Presently 1 picked up the two baskets of dark cherries, and we said farewell and walked out of the house, across the garden, and so into the wood again. We were silent. The wood, soundless also, full of a fragrance of trees and bl hidden blossoms, stood over us like something watchful, infinite, everlasting. All at once, attracted by some stir in the oak trees, Christina stopped, tilted back her head and gazed upwards. And I remember how I suddenly set down the cherries in the grass, hastily seized her hands, and began to speak to her urgently and tenderly, overcome by a strange fear lest it should be too late.—Now and Thon.