GATEWAYS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 233, 21 December 1927, Page 6

GATEWAYS

They said he was dying, and her heart ached for him. She was only a child, a lithe brown youngster with grey eyes, and she would climb the wall and look over into the wonder garden where he lived. She almost hated the gardener who planted the violets in stilff rows, and left the blossom trees to die.. Surely he would like to see the blossom, even if he were dying. So day by day she clambered over the wall, and watered the blossom tree, it was a late plum, which bloomed at Christmas, but as yet the flowers slept. One day she looked up to see a man in a wheel-chair beside her, a kindly man with white hair and smiling eyes. She started to go, but he stopped her, saying, “Why do you care so much for my tree, Grey-eyes?” She turned. “To-morrow is Christmas day, and the buds will open in the dawn. It is a day for happiness.” “Come again to-morrow, and we shall watch together,” he said. She climbed the wall and looked at the waving pines, and beyond that the blue sea, and then back to where a man with brave eyes was wheeling his chair toward the house. Only the wind stirred, just the wind on the water . , . She stopped, because the gate had caught in its rusty latch. She bent over and pushed at it, but did not look down, because just beyond the gate was the little tree trying to blossom, and a slanting ray from the sun had set the new white petals glistening like the flash of a lovely idea. A faint breeze ruffled the shining leaves.

“Oh!” she said, *T saw the flash of your wings just then.” The rusty hinges creaked as she swung the gate open and passed in. That morning they watched together the glory of the trees, he with his brave eyes, she with her sad ones. Once his eyes wandered, when a faint wind blew a shower of petals on the child’s hair. She touched a bough, brushing from it a cobweb, soft as the flowers beneath it, yet strong enough to rob them of their shining. “God has kissed them,” said the man, “they are immortal.” She was silent for a moment, then, “How did you learn that?” she asked. His eyes were radiant as they rested upon her. The setting sun, Altering through the green pine-needles, covered the child’s closed eyes with golden lace. She was picturing a tree with white blossoms behind a gate that was hard to open—blossoms that had whispered to her of Life and Heath, and the gateways that open on the two great ways of the world. —Harvest Moon (Alma Chamberlain).