ALMOND BLOSSOM

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 851, 20 December 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

ALMOND BLOSSOM

By

HELEN WOLSELEY RUSSELL

r !■ i E lay dying, with all the tender scents of spring blowing over him. If InHsllli H ' s bed stood close to the open i.! window, and outside sparrows were building in the wistaria. “Ip the spring” . . . God! Not another

spring for him. They had tried gallantly to conceal his great illness and of late had even gone the lengths of telephoning from next door for the doctor. They thought he did not know. His ears, overkeen because there was so little to do, recognised his sister's footsteps on the gravel path next door. Why should she be there, when there had been sustained warfare between the two families for

several years now? Louise had loved him when they were both at college, with the curious, unselfish, divine first love of seventeen. They were together constantly, to and from classes, and he had thought her a pretty kid, but no more than that. But in that other spring, when the almond by the gate looked a froth of foam against the star-bright midnight, he had kissed her lightly, with the appreciation of a connoisseur. She, with a rapturous joy in her first kiss, had thoroughly t'rightened him by the strength of her great love; and freeing himself gently, he had walked away next door, pondering the ways of women. This was too much; that she should read in a careless kiss a lifetime of devotion. Certainly, he admitted, he had gone about with her a lot the past year, but that meant nothing these days. Unfortunately, he soliloquised, she was not the stuff to play with . . . serious under ail her fun. Well, she must learn her lesson. First year at ’Varsity meant many new things to absorb. Louise Levant, fastidious and remote, and utterly unaware of the social order about her. walked in a world apart. Unfortunately she had never known school life, her education being provided for by two devoted parents. Harman Levant, man of science and absorbed in research, had early shown her the secrets of his laboratory, which became her childhood’s playroom, and now she was taking a science degree. With an intelligence far above her contemporaries, enabling her studies to be pursued with ease, she was yet totally unprepared for a hard world and its studied commercialism. Her lonely upbringing shut her out from communion with the young people about her; the girls’ intimate talks, always of men, horrified and disappointed her, while the young men themselves seemed singularly uneducated, uninteresting and unlovely to her discerning eye. So, brought up on a wide reading of the

Romantics, she had fallen hopelessly in love with lan Cunningham. A brilliant third-year man of courteous manners and good looks, he had seemed a creature apart and exquisite, a brother of the high gods. Alone in her little grey-green bedroom she had often sought his likeness in a book of Ancient Greece, and it seemed he was most like Mercury, messenger of the Gods, with swift winged feet and unstudied poise.

The sick man turned from the light with a curse, and buried his face in the tumbled pillows. The hot bottle had lost its cover and was burning him. With a mighty effort he kicked it out. The soft thud was a certain satisfaction, but he lay breathless with the exertion. No other spring . . .

Again his sister’s steps next door brought him thoughts of Louise. She had grown ill, little, lovely Louise, because of that kiss under the almond tree, and because he’d gradually broken with her for safety and taken other girls out — all the other chaps did. She had sacrificed the brilliant possibilities of her career, because work was impossible, and had been sent to Sydney to stay with cousins and forget. And there, they told him, she married a middle-aged English woolbuyer, of unimpeachable character, and proud owner of three grown-up daughters. She never came back to the old house next door with its sad, silver-haired inmates, alone now through winter nights and summer days. Once they went Home to see her and their two grand-children, but no one heard anything of the visit. It was rumoured she was not happy . . . Nothing but impending calamity would have induced his family to borrow the ’phone next door, so that he might not hear. A light footfall in the room and lan opened his eyes to see his mother, the inevitable medicine bottle in her hand, and a forced smile on her face. “How are you feeling, darling? Does the strong light bother your eyes? Let me lower the blind a little.” She turned to the window. “No, no, mother, I love the sun. D’you remember last year, that river party we had for the Howell boys? I’ll be rowing you all again this time next year, you’ll see.” She turned hastily from the light and struggled to hide her feelings, patting the white coverlet which lay scarce raised by the boy’s wasted body. He watched her with a whimsical smile, wondering at the love of mothers, which will transcend all injury. How deliberately he had wounded her in a thousand ways in the past few years. “You do straighten me beautifully, mother. I feel a new man again. Give me a cig.., please.” She watched unhappily as the flame lit his transparent fingers. * * * Weeks passed and full spring lapped all the land in a tide of green and yellow. The sick man’s days passed in long dreams of the swift brief life behind him. How ardently he had snatched at every pleas-

ure, companioned the wildest lads of the to» n broken his mother's heart. And now he hheard them whisper he was paying the price ei indulgence . . his thoughts kept running i n a vicious circle . . . thank God he had had his fli n ' anyway.

The room was quiet, confoundedly go, as u with hushed hearts they watched for his death Visions of women he had known rose iu a i on , procession—Elaine, Molly. Dorothy, Mrs. Wyber of the raven hair. Joan. Esther. Phyllis—and fB- - dim yet radiant and refreshing, litti, Louise Levant. He’d been rather a beast ove that, but then he couldn't pretend to care whet he didn’t. Hang it, a man doesn't get tied for life to one woman whom he doesn't even Iov e when he's still at College.

How was he to know ihat a kiss should mean so much to her? Any other girl he'd take on expected it as a matter of course, realising it wa his proper payment for giving her a good time Queer thing, modern life. A few years before that war which he dimly remembered aa khaki colour threaded with martial music, men worshipped women as creatures above them selves—a kiss was the sign of an engagement ami lasting love. Apparently Louise had belonged to that time really—he could never quite place her Even now some fellows were like that, he’d heard but the girls he’d known would have thought i slow.

Once he had tried to keep count of the women he had kissed, but he had long since given it up He thought with a cynical amusement of hij many romantic partings. Some girls staged i very cleverly. Some put just too muchscen in the little curved hollow above the upper lip' were too eager with a new rendezvous. From tin! “How do you do?” to the “Good-bye dear,” it wal all a mockery ... but somehow rather amusing. What was love? He had never loved anyone Himself he regarded in a perspective of true values, as does the real egoist; an amused looker of his. own actions. His own father anil mother were lovers still, which never ceased t> amaae him. Perhaps if the one women hal come into his life, he woflld not have sought si many others, nor have arrived where he waj now'. God! Life was sweet yet, and he hal hardly lived. Why did other fellows get otfis> lightly—lightly—lightly—what a strange word! “An’ Joe Golightly very right, jabbed him in thi spine” . . where had he read that?

He wished he had drunk yet deepei the rei wine of life . . . Margot ... he scarcely lemenbered her, but they were going away for & wealend together. At the last moment she hal funked It, thought of her dear mama . . . littls fool . . .

“Give me a beaker full of the warm South." He had always loved Keats, even to hiding hhi from schoolboy scorn at the High School . .

“Beaded bubbles winking . . . purple-stainei mouth.” Now the hot passionate East with iti

riot of colours was denied him . . . he would never get there - . . Perhaps in Hell there would be gorgeous colour, clashing sound, lithe brown women dancing in the flames. At least the antithesis of orthodox heaven . . . queer hew one’s childish notions persisted.

How he loathed the outwardly godiy and respectable; a throwback, he supposed, to an aristocratic ancestry which had certainly helped to people India With Eurasians in the Eighteen!) Century . . .

No excitement, th§ doctor said. As if there was any fear of that, he thought, self-moekingly. He lay alone in the quiet night. Every bird was still in the purple wistaria, and moonlight glimmered on his narrow bed. The sweet, beady smell of wattle blew elusively through (he window, and he drew in breaths of pain and ecstasy. Resentful of the beauty, yet helplessly captive to it, the peace of moonlight night gradually enveloped him in a tender, almost visible cloud. Hard thoughts were impossible, and all lovely things filled his mind—colours, green, silver, gold, midnight blue —and a strange unearthly happiness possessed him.

If he could but summon enough strength, he would climb out of bed and through the French window, to lie in a flood of silver on the lawn If it were but true that one lived again . . . Yet no world could possibly be lovelier than tvis miracle of light and colour, sound and sense. At the gate the almond tree would be in white splendour, but he was too feeble even to raise himself in bed.

Almond blossom . . . Louise with her frosthair, that other spring. How was it he had been so young and arrogant and let her go, little exquisite Louise, lovelier than all the othe"s; more perfect . . . yes, that was it . . . she had b< en unreal in his experience, too perfect, and he lad let her marry a middle-aged widower. There was a shadow over the moon now, a blurred cloud shadow with soft edges. Perhaps he might even have loved her, had he not been so scared, so afraid of being caught and tied down.

The moon shone bright again, and it seemed there was someone at the window, but that could not be, at midnight. The idea persisted and he struggled to rise, helplessly, a choked sob outside, and the moon blurred again, hidden by a shaking head, with moonlight touching frost-gold hair. All at once, he knew it had always b'en she. “Louise, beloved!” He held out thin armsShe came through the open doors and held him close, crying softly. „ “Help me out, Louise, the almond is in bloom. IV ith unnatural strength he dragged himself vp. and with her young arms about him they nanaged silently to reach the lawn and then the haren of the little tree. He lay in the chequered shadows, utterly exhausted, his head in her I*P> and with his thin hand trying to still (he choi’.inS sobs that sheek her . . . “He is dead,” she said in answer to his " n ' spoken query.

The almond petals fell in a sor: confetti, aud dawn, speeding with swift-winged feet over t mountains, caressed a weeping woman.