WEEK-END READING

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 104, 23 July 1927, Page 10

WEEK-END READING

SIMON THE SIMPLE

By

MYRA MORRIS

Upon the hilltop Simon felt that he was in a world alone with God. He would fling out his arms, and let the wind blow through his hair —a queer, flapping figure, with long limbs and ungainly movements. He would walk along the ridge, and descend by the winding path at the | other side, calling to the cows. “Hoi! Hoi! Hoi!” he would cry, trailing them along that narrow little hoof-marked track. Every hill had those tiny paths going round and round it, like the motionless ribbons of a maypole, or converging to one point like the strands of a spider’s web. Most of the paths seemed to spray out and up from the farm. The farm lay in the hollow, an uneven cluster of buildings, sheltered by dusky pines and basket-willows. It was called Yellow-Cup, though no man could remember why, and it held an air of prosperity, with its silverclanking windmills, its towered silo, and red roofs. It was sheltered in the hollow, the wind only coming in at one low gap. Here Simon could almost see it swirling in grey and turbulent, like a swinging tide between walls of cliff. But it was up on the ridge where the winds walked, mostly. And Simon walked with them, foot to foot, with their fingers in his hair. He was the youngest Selfridge son—a lad of 20, with a shock of yellow curls, vague, swimming eyes, and a mouth as tender as a woman’s. His speech was a little blurred, and he had not many words. When he walked, he went unevenly, dragging one leg a little after the other. Down at the township of Smith’s River they called Simon “queer,” and reminded one another that he had had a fall from a cart as a very small child. Simon had always been given to understand that he was different from other people. Perhaps it was just that thing that was responsible for his utter sensitiveness, and the strange aloofness that made him averse from man, but akin with the good, sweetrunning grass, and the sky, and the beasts of the field. In all things Simon was the antithesis of the elder Selfridge. Ralph was ten years his senior—-brisk and domineering, with a mind that was quick to seize an advantage and turn it to account. He was intensely matter of fact, and' arrived at every conclusion by the cold, clean way of logic. A hard man, they called him at Smith’s River, looking at his coarse black hair, lean windburnt cheeks, and glittering brown eyes. All the tenderness that was in Ralph Simon saw. It was as though Ralph was always aware of Simon. Of an evening, sitting in the cosy living-room he would steal side-looks at the boy as he sat staring into the fire or idly turning the leaves of a book. They were quiet nights at Yellow Cup. Old man Selfridge, and the mother, dozed in their slippery horsehair chairs, or played patience. You would hear the pine boughs rasping the roof, “Swish, swish, swish”; the guttural laugh of the playing ’possums, the contented chewing of a cow that had meandered into the yard; sometimes the plaintive crying of distant sheep, like the wailing voices of a lost human multitude. Then the old man’s grunt as he wakened with the wheezy strike of the clock, to spit in the fire, or Simon, humming under his breath, as he whittled at a stick. “Hey diddle-diddle, the cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon. Ha-ha!” It was a quiet place to bring a young girl. Ralph felt that, and was apprehensive. Nevertheless, the girl was coming. He was going down to town in the car to bring her up in the middle of the autumn. She was not his bride yet, but he hoped that she would be. In this thing he had found that his usual cold calculation and deliberation were of no avail. With Phillipa you went warily. Just as you went to catch a frightened bird, so you would go to catch Phillipa lonely little Phillipa, who worked in a chemist’s shop in the day-time, and lived in a bed-sitting-room at night. It was she herself who had proposed this visit. Left to himself, Ralph did not know whether, all things considered, he would have risked the invitation. The wing that he would add to the house for their private use was not U p yet — in the cold weather the house was dark and depressing—and always, there was Simon. But—“I want to see you in the setting where you belong,” she had told him. “And that will be my setting, too. So far we are almost as strangers.” Phillipa came to Yellow Cup at the end of a pale autumn day. The poplars beside the fence were tapering up to the sky like thin, ascending flames, and the docks were deep and dark, the colour of rusted iron. Ralph drove the car round to the back of the house. Phillipa clambered out—a wisp of a girl, with 'golden, bobbed hair, essentially modern, essentially youthful, about her something of the quality of quicksilver, something of the elusiveness of the wind. Down in the dark hollow she seemed to stand out like the yellow poplars. She looked round, shivering a little. The cows were lowing in their milking bails. The colour had gone out of the sky. She was a stranger in a strange land. Even Ralph was a strange figure, backing the car into a low shed.

Simon was crossing the yard with two silver-bright buckets. He had a hat pulled down over his forehead, and his hair was growing low on his neck. He stopped still and stared, clanking the handles.

“This is Simon,” said Ralph, coming out of the shed.

He had not wanted Simon to be about just then. But, because of that very wish, his smile was brighter, as he turned to the queer, tattered figure. “You’ve spoken of him often,” said Phillipa, putting out her hand. She wanted to burst into tears. There was something incongruous about the whole thing. That the simple lad should be the first to welcome her to Yellow Cup! Now, for always, he would represent to her Yellow Cup. Yellow Cup would be Simon. Simon kept her slim hand in his rough one, looking away across the ridges Some belated cows were coming in a black string over the tops. The bunched trees were dark with meaning against the vague sky. The wiry tussocks of grass along the hollow suddenly shook with an ecstasy of movement.

“Look!” he shouted, with a rough movement that startled the girl. “There’s nothing,” said Ralph, wearily.

“It’s the wind cornin’ through the gap,” said Simon. “Look; it would be lifting the basket-willows, and making them silver like the tops of the oats.”

“I see,” said Phillipa, shading he; eyes with her hand.

She glanced back, into the soft, smiling face of Ralph’s brother, and saw something there that balanced the first shock the sight of him had given her. Simon stood watching her hair, that sprayed out in little side-pieces under her hat. It was the colour of the fine, dried grasses in the paddocks—the thin, feathery kind that are always of a tremble.

“Go and get the milking done. Si., old chap,” said Ralph. He spoke as though to a child. Simon hesitated, then lurched away unwillingly, a puzzled look in his eyes. A troubling sense of wrong possessed him. It made him want to follow thosa=

two into the house instead of going off to the cow-bails, where Annie the help was already squirting milk into the buckets.

It was funny, Simon thought. He had never felt like that before. He looked over the lilac-swatlied hollow, and the pine groves that blotted the ridges. All that was Ralph’s. And he did not mind. He looked at the racehorse, standing sleek and graceful outside its stall. Ralph’s again. No matter! The car was standing in the shed —his only share in it was the cleaning once a week —belonged to Ralph too! And once more that aroused in him no sense of injustice. But the girl Phillipa, with Ralph's proprietary touch on her arm, filled him with a feeling of deep-down tears. For the first time he knew jealousy. In the living room later he watched the girl, sitting close to Ralph, answering his mother’s dry, curt questions with a little nervousness. The thought came into his head as he sat, drawing the poker through the coals. “She’s scared of us all. She’s scared of mother in her black silk dress. And she’s frightened of the 'possums on the roof, and me!” Presently the cards were brought out, but Simon still sat drumming against the fender. He never played cards with them. “Oh, Si.,” they would exclaim, goodnaturedly. “Si doesn’t want to play, do you, old chap?” And he would shake his head, and drift off to bed. his boots clattering noisily over the linoleum. Simon saw and heard more than folks gave him credit for. Once he had heard his father asking in a dry whisper:— “If he hadn’t been tipped out of that cart as a wee fellow, would Simon have been normal, after all? He was rising four then and dull, and slow of speech ” Simon, listening, had heard more. Then he had crawled away down into the chaff-room and had sat wringing his hands. Ralph had found him there, calling him in the soft voice that he kept exclusively for Simon. But now Simon was to see that Ralph possessed another, deeper, finer tenderness. A tenderness that was centred in the girl Phillipa. It made him anxious to please. It made him flush easily, and dismiss with a contemptuous laugh things that he had considered up till now of paramount importance. Simon watched the two with brooding, hopeless eyes. For the first time in his life he was unhappy. An unhappiness that was one with the sorrow of a child, perhaps, yet you can usually lay your finger on a child’s sorrow. With Simon it was a large, vague pain that touched him all over. A few mornings after Phillipa’s coming Simon saw her walking up the ridge with his lunch in her hands. She seemed to move a little unwillingly. “If I were to be telling her the way the robins build their nests and the plovers leave their eggs in the damp places, she’d be soon caring about me,” he thought boastfully. More than anything in the world Simon wantdd the smile of this girl. Now he watched her while she took out the bottle of tea, the wind blowing all the fine little hairs along her arm. “Why do you mend the fences over here?” she asked. “It’s a long way round.” “I come over to the ridge to listen to the wind in the pines,” said Simon, drawing a sleeve across his mouth. The girl smiled at his answer. It pleased her. She had made up her mind that for Ralph’s sake she would conquer that queer, indefinable fear that Simon had raised in her. The child in her would spring up in answer to the child in him. She thought that she recognised in him qualities that no one else saw. She would take pains with him. She would learn from him. And he would learn from her. She would try not to see him as a weird, unfathomable mind brooding over Yellow Cup. “The pines, they’ll be saying queer things when the wind comes,” said Simon. “In the spring you hit them, and the yellow dust flies out.” He showed her a little warm hollow in a tussock of amber-coloured grass. “A little tan hare hev laid here,” he said. “And look! The nest of one of they blue wrens! They sing like glass beads clinking together!” She sat broodingly over the green depression, she asked, curiously. “Yellow Cup! Why Yellow Cup?” She had asked Ralph, but he had shaken his head, and replied in a matter-of-fact voice that it didn’t matter anyhow. “When the capeweed comes in th’ spring,” said Simon, “the hollow is grand and yellow. It would be a fine cup for a giant king to drink out of!” He watched her go down the ridge, walking unevenly as though she could not get to the bottom soon enough. Ralph was waiting there. Again that feeling of bitter hurt laid hold of Simon. After that morning Phillipa went out often with the lad. Sometimes lie was ploughing under a wide, windy sky. Sometimes he was mending the fences, or cutting down the stark, brown thistles. “He is a great, sirriple soul,” she told Ralph one morning as they stood under the denuded poplars. “He has the mind of a poet. You have made him think he is queer, all of you. You have imposed that thought on him since babyhood. Now you have the result. He should be away from here. He should be among fresh, sunny scenes and new faces.”

And she knew as she spoke that she did not want Simon always there at Yellow Cup. Happy as she was with him. roaming childishly over the mush-ropm-whitened p idocks. she was always aware that she walked step in step with something that frightened her because she could not understand it.

As the days shortened, and the cold increased, Phillipa found the house depressing. Sometimes she would ride away with Ralph and return at dusk Sometimes she would go alone.

One afternoon she left late, saying that she would ride into Smith’s River and see if there was ny mail. Ralph from his little office watched her riding out against the ashen sky. Simon was in the yard mending a leaking tank. He stared, hands over eyes, at the horse and rider till they had climbed the ridge

An hour later Simon was still working, whistling dolorously as he manipulated the soldering iron. Then he faced round, whistled shrilly across the hills, and watched the black strings of cows meandering down.

There was a crimson slash of colour in the sky like a deep wound, and the wind had a whinnying note that presaged a storm.

Simon moved across the yard to the cowbails. To him there came galloping the roan mare that Phillipa had ridden, her sides heaving, her head hanging, her saddle twisted. He looked at the trembling animal yrith dulled eyes, then a terrible pain shot into his heart. Where was Phillipa? There must have been a.i accident. A piece of hawthorn was tied to the pommel with a scrap of ribbon. That indicated that she ha,' gone the road that led to the blue lake. The near blue lake had high, cliff-like sides that crumbled treacherously. Simon gave a hunted look round the yard, that was filling with cattle. He opened his mouth to call Ralph, then shut it. No! This was something that he could manage himself. This

was between him and Phillipa! He would go and find her. Ralph had nothing to do with it. His muddled brain worked cunningly. She might be dead —or, again, she might be hurt. There was a flask of brandy that stood on the shelf outside Ralph’s office. He would take that with him. There was a light in Ralph’s office as he passed by, and the rustle of papers. “Phillipa not back yet?” he called. “It’s going to rain!” "No I haven’t seen her!” The lad’s heart beat up into his throat. He took the flask soundlessly and went out to the stable. It was nearly dark as he galloped up the ridge, the cows’ patient bellowing sounding behind him, and darker when he reached the cliffs of the blue lake. He dismounted, tied the horse under a tree, and groped around the edge. Far below he thought that he could see a glimmer of white—Phillipa’s cream riding coat. “Ho! Ho!” he cried, as he crawled over the side, and commenced the dangerous descent. “Old Ralph, he is not in this. It is only me—Simon.” In the light there was little risk, for the path was there somewhere, but in the semi -darkness, there was danger in every step. Twice he slipped, and saved himself by clutching tufts of grass and roots. The rain was falling as he reached the sandy earth. Great, heavy drops were flattening themselves against the girl’s face. Simon leaned over her and put the flask to her lips. Phillipa stirred. She heard the sound of waters lapping. She looked up and saw a wall of cliff hard against the vague grey sky—nearer, the face of Simon. She remembered it all. “Th’ horse come galloping home,” said Simon in his clipped speech. “Where is Ralph?” asked Phillipa, looking round in terror. “I dunno.” The boy’s voice was sullen. “Where are you hurt?” She moved herself carefully. “Only my shoulder and arm,” she said. “Just bruised badly, I think. The horse slipped near the edge. I tried to get off the other side. The ground was soft, I think. I overbalanced somehow.” She smiled wanly. “I should have gone for the mail as I had meant to! ” She looked at the rim of the sky above the cliff. It seemed to shut them off from the other world. Here were the simpleton and she—and crying waters, and wind, and fury. She shuddered as he drew her into a little rock hollow away from the rain. “We can’t get up th’ cliff till daylight,” he said. “The. horse is tied up.” He fashioned a sling for her arm out of his handkerchief, and tied it on. She saw his face, a blurred white oval hanging above her in the dark. It was very cold- He took her hand and fondled it, crooning under his breath. “If you would put your head on my arm, Phillipa,” he said huskily. She did so, weeping soundlessly in an agony of apprehension, and she felt his lips touch her hair. The storm raged about them. Crouched there staring into the dark Simon was more happy than he had ever been. He was holding something very beautiful —something that would pass as swiftly as a rosered sunset, or the flowers on the briar—but something that he would have to keep in his heart for always. For a little hour he had Phillipa away from Ralph. And he loved little Phillipa, with her hair that smelled like the leaves of the musk! He loved her as no one could have understood. Up at the farmhouse Ralph had had his tea in a gloomy silence. He watched the drops beading the windows, and cursed the black world outside. Phillipa was staying in Smith’s River until the storm was over, but where was that young fool of a Simon? What mad caprice had taken him riding off in the rain, unless it was to bring Phillipa home? Ralph glowered on in front of the house after the old people had gone off to bed. The rain died away suddenly, as though it had been pulled back by a gigantic, unseen hand, then began again fretfully. He dozfd, sitting with his feet in the fender. When he next looked at the clock it was 12. He sat up wildly, passing his hands through his hair. No Phillipa! No Simon! He stumbled out to the tele-

phone, wondering - that he had not thought of it before. Ten minutes’ ringing brought a sleepy, bad-tem-pered operator at the other end. Ralph listened dully to his sullen replies. No, no one from Yellow Cup had ridden in for the mail. . . .

Ralph went to the door and leaned out, the drops from the pines slanting in his face. Where were they? An insistent troubling note was beating somewhere in his brain. What wrong was afoot? He heard a horse moving restlessly in the stable, and went out, taking the lantern with him. He turned the light on to the dejected-looking roan that stood wearily under its slipped saddle. Phillipa’s horse! Its hair was dry under his fingers. The saddle was bone dry, too. The animal had come home before the storm. Suddenly Ralph gave a great laugh. He could see it all now'! Simon out in the yard—the horse coming home— Simon stealing in with a hang-dog manner to the shelf. Simon! He could see Simon with his childish, worshipping eyes on Phillipa’s face. “Oh, Christ!” he muttered. “Where are they?” He looked at the horse’s hoofs. Sand and grass! Had Phillipa taken the way of the blue lake? She had said the day before that she wanted to ride there again. Phillipa! Phillipa lying perhaps cold and dead! Phillipa with poor, foolish, ineffectual Simon. And he could do nothing till morning. In the pearly daylight, when the magpies were singing, he rode away, digging his feet into the horse’s ribs. Down the hollow and up the ridge he went, out on to the road, splashing through the mire and shallow puddles. A great anger rode with him. The terrible rage that he had thought subdued clawed and bit at him like a fierce animal eating his heart. Simon! When he could get at Simon!

He saw them before he got up to the blue lake. Simon was helping the girl on to his horse. Ralph could see that she had her arm in a sling. And in that moment he paused to wonder how the boy had clambered down that face

of cliff in the dark. Simon came "walking over the grass i to him, his face crestfallen. Ralph dismounted, waving Phillipa back. “You young dog.” he said in a choked voice. “Why didn’t you call “It was me that was wanting to bring her back,” said Simon, stridently. “Couldn’t I be having her to myself—me that sees the glory of God in her! I wasn’t tellin’ you, Ralph” “Oh,” cried Phillipa with a choked voice. “He was therd all the time, and I might have been dying, or” “Go back by the horse,” said Ralph gently. “This isn’t for you to hear.” She went, stumbling. There was something terrible in the pale, windless dawn. The brothers were quarreling. Simon looked wild and strange, like an uncouth figure out of a book. She shuddered at the sight of him. “You ,” began Ralph, when he was sure that Phillipa was gone. “I was wanting to kiss her hair,” said Simon in a low voice. A slow smile spread over his face, transfiguring it. Ralph saw red. His vision became blurred. He hit out, and the boy staggered back untier a blow. Twice he hit, then Simon’s foot had shot out and the two were on the ground, Ralph’s fist pummelling the breath out of his brother’s slight body. For a moment Simon was on top, his arms raised. Then Phillipa screamed. Simon stood up, reeling a little. Ralph shook himself and wiped the blood from his face where a stone in the grass had cut him. “You are trying to kill Ralph,” cried Phillipa, her eyes flaming. “O God, it is terrible! I saw you!” She flung out her free arm. “Oh, take me away from here,” she moaned. "Ralph, I am frightened of Simon. Always he has seemed like a black shadow over the place! And I tried —for your sake . . . can’t stay there with him always. I couldn’t bear it. If there were children running round I’d be thinking”—

The boy stood still, his eves on the ground, not showing that ho had Jjeanl A little smile curled round Simons swollen lips.

“You might have killed me then Ralph,” he said foolishy. ‘But i wouldn’t stay.” He spoke very gentlv. “They were saying once that it was you tipped me out of the little wooden cart when I was a wee fellow. It was in one of your bad rages. They didnt know I heard!” Ralph put his hands over his eyes, then he threw up his head. “They don’t know,” he said thickly “Tliev don’t know! And I don’t know whether . It is just that ” Poor Ralph!” said Simon dally, twisting his hands. He looked back towards Phillipa. I wouldn’t tel! her that,” he said. “I could have told her if I’d wanted. But you must no: frighten her. She is gentle, like the little rabbits. It is a great thins she did not see you hit me! That Is another thing I would not tell.” “Simon.” said Ralph, holding oat his hand. “Simon!” In that one word sounded years ol remorse, and love. Simon took his hand and patted it childishly. “I’ll be going away from Yellow Cup after what —after what she said,” he sighed. “I dunno ” Ralph saw Phillipa edging near with a wan smile on her lips. He looked from the one to the other. Phillipa stayed and Simon weir.: Again Simon paid the price. The gross unfairness of it! Always the innocent suffering for the guilty. . . Bs* she would always feel Simon as the black shadow that rested over Yellow Cup. . . “Get up with him,” said Simon. Til foller.” Between the brothers passed a Ion; look. Ralph’s face was torinentedSimon’s like that of an exultant child. The man and girl moved off slcwly Behind them Simon the simple stood with his chin on the horse’s flank. Th e n he followed, is head bent, the bridle hanging limply between his fingers..- “ Australasian.”