The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 1 October 1908, Page 3

The Storyteller

WANDERERS

They were like a couple of withered leaves that dance' in the sun on an autumn day, and only await the storm wind to blow them into the abyss. They had wandered about the Continent so long that they were known at pretty well all the cheap hotels of Europe; the elderly man with the military air, and the tall, thin wife, who was not so much younger than he, yet|kept the air of youth deceptively unless one were to see her in a strong light. It was all very well while the summer lasted, and they fraternised with pleasant people from home who were making holiday abroad, It was another matter when the holiday-makers went home, so many of them with a joyous air, as though, after all, home was best. Even at the gayest, however, the two held somewhat aloof from their kind, as though they could not help it. They clung together. They were too lonely on their plank in the great ocean to have, anything really in common with those who had struck roots in the world. They wanted to - be gay and friendly, but people only pretended that they succeeded. They were a pair of poor ghosts at the banquet of life, and they were never warmed and fed, however, much they might pretend. Time had been when they had had a home like other people and the warmth of their own hearth fire. That was before Andrew Despard had sunk himself so deeply prospecting for minerals on his small estate that it was impossible for them to live at home any longer. Years had passed now since they had laid eyes on Bawn Rose, the white house with the green shutters, at the head of the Glen. It was in the hands of strangers. The grass had covered the gashes Andrew Despard had made in the green places, the pits had been filled in It was as though the skin had healed over a sore. Only Nora Despard's heart carried the memory of the place like a live thing that called her home .of evenings and in the quiet hours of the night. Her heart was always hungry for Bawn Rose the pleasant, comfortable place in the hands of strangers. She did not talk of it to Andrew as they took their interminable walks abroad, because she was afraid to> hurt him. But the ache and pain of hunger never ceased in her breast. No wonder she was thin and haggard, that her brows were hollow under her brown hair, her eyes sunken. Sometimes people said that if Mrs. Despard had not been so thin she would have been handsome. Only Andrew Despard ' could have told how handsome she had been when he married her, how bright and brown and gay, the finest of sportswomen witty, frank, engaging. Half the country had been mad for her. -But, to be sure, to Andrew Nora had never changed She was still the Nora of his youth, not the haggard woman, growing old, for whom strangers sometimes felt a pang of pity It was worst of all when, at the- end of the season, all the happy folks gone home, they lingered on in some seaside place by courtesy or pity of their landlady. It was better for health Nora decided, than the stuffy town lodgings to which presently they would have to go. • ■* But how sad it was in October, when 'everybody w^Tgone' away, and the big house was full of empty rooms, and they huddldd in warm garments in a bare salon - which had been pleasant enough in summer. Nora thought a deal of health. It was a nightmare of hers that the time must come when one of them should be left. alone. Sometimes she faced it shudderingly. When "that time came, she prayed : ' Dear God, let me be left, for what wouldVAndrew do without me?' Her lot without him did not bear thinking on; but his without her f Why, she could not rest: even in heaven if he were alone on the earth. ■ Sometimes, when they were parted for a little while, when Nora_'v?entjp the nearest town on matters of business, it was most pitiable, to see Andrew .waiting about corners, straining his tired eyes when it was time for her to return. Once a very unhappy woman, whose husband had outraged and betrayed her, had made to a silent circle the remark that she thought Mrs. Despard ought to.be a very happy woman". But there were very few to -envy poor Nora, the devotion of her husband. •„ . They had never had any children. , Perhaps if they had had Andrew would not have, been- so reckless with his small property! He would have had a sense of responsibility . to make him careful. It had been so easy to gd on spending th& monav «,!«„

there had been only Nora and himself to think of. It had never occurred to Nora to reproach him in the slightest' degree in her own mind because he had not thought of her. To be sure, they were all in all to each other. They were so entirely one that she could not have imputed blame to him without attaching it to herself. - , 1 My poor girl,' Andrew would say sometimes, ' to think of the life I have condemned, you to 1 Why, if I close my eyes I can see you on Colleen riding up to the meet of the r Slaney's, and myself beside you on the Don. Do you remember when we used to have the meet at Bawn Rose? I can see you standing at the head of the table pouring out the tea and coffee, with your hat on your head, and your habit held up on one arm, and the portrait of your Uncle Mick looking down at you from over the chimney-piece.' • Those were good times,' Nora would say, pressing his arm fondly. ' He liked to talk of the old times. In fact, the older he became the more he lived in the happy old days, and forgot the sad latter years. His memories stabbed her, kept the edge of hunger keen, yet she humored him as she would have humored him in anything. He grew old very fast. He was barely turned sixty, yet he was as old as another man at seventy. Sometimes Nora asked herself fearfully what she was going to do when he became really old and ought to have comfort and nursing. It seemed to herself that there had never been any real comfort, real warmth, in their lives since they had left Bawn Rose. Oh, Bawn Rose, with its trout stream singin* and clattering over its gold and silver stones, its million birds its tangled orchard, its drifts of lovely single roses on the lawn ! How comfortable and homelike were the rooms ! How pleasant the people, who never forgot that the Despards were an old honorable family, and Nora herself an O'Moorc, descended from princes! If they could only go home and end their days at Bawn Rose ! But it was as far away from them as heaven. Her thoughts went on idly to her cousin Dick, Richard O 'Moore, the O 'Moore. Andrew was talking away at her side of the old days, forgetting, while he talked, how far he had travelled away from them. With the telepathy which often exists between an attached husband and wife, he also thought of O Moore. 'Poor Dick,' he said; ' I wonder what became of him. You couldn't have done worse if you'd married Dick, Nora.' ' I couldn't have done better than mairy the man of my heart, anyhow,' she said cheerfully. _ They had often discussed Dick. He and Andrew had been" rivals in their love for Nora. She had accepted Andrew, and Dick had flung himself away out of the country— to the Australian goldfields. It was a long time ago. There had been neither tale nor tidings of Dick. He must have gone under ' long ago. And as for his old house, Dysart, it had been a gaunt ruin before the Despards had gone into exile. It was quite a long time since they had remembered to talk about Dick. They walked back towards the empty hotel, Nora fiddlin* absently with the long, bog-oak chain she wore about her neck as they talked of Dick. It had been Dick's gift to her lon* ago. It was not pretty and had little value. Perhaps else it might have gone- the way of her other pretty things. She had an unconquerable habit of generosity. You had but to admire a trinket, and it was yours if you would accept it. She h-d found a good many people at one time or another willing >o accept her pretty things, and go away and forget her. What was the use of hoarding them? she asked. There was no one to come after her. Why shouldn't they give pleasure to a girl or a pretty, kind woman? . Although they were too poor to live in their own country Nora had never learnt to hold her hand. Where children were concerned she would give them anything. She adored children. So did Andrew, for the matter of that. They never talked of the little hfe that had fluttered into the world for an hour out of it again. But Nora had never forgotten it, nor had ' Andrew, if one could judge by the way he blinked his poor old eyes with a quiver of his face when he saw Nora playing with children. She could never keep away from chidlren. At the summer hotels she might be a ghost among the merrymakers —me tall, thin, old-young woman with her shabby frocks— but to the children she was welcome. They spake a common language of the heart. The children never found her drab and sad an old.- As she sat on- the sands with them, or in the salon on a wet day, playing rowdy games in which she became -flushed and disheveled, she ceased to be a thin old ghost Andrew coming.upon her one. day,, with her hair about her

shoulders, laughing as- madly as the merriest child, went away again with his hand over his eyes. He had seen the ghost of his wife's j'outh. -. ' We had better move next week,' Nora said, as^they went up the steep village street. \ Madame grows restive. She wants to shut up the house for the winter. I've written to Madame Cappeur to have our rooms ready.' Andrew sighed. The winter in the Rue des Herbalistes was a melancholy prospect: the English-speaking population of the town were, like the Despards themselves, needy and hopeless. Winter used to be good at Bawn Rose. There was the hunting. Andrew had almost forgotten the feel of his legs across a horse. And he didn't like that winter population ; Nora didn't. It consisted of people who had escaped their creditors, women with a past, all sorts of needy adventurers. No one had suffered for the Despards' misfortunes, no one but themselves. Amid that winter population Andrew could hold his head high. But he was lonely, as Nora was lonely. There was nothing really in common between them and that winter population. Andrew, despite his broken-down air, had a look of clean living, and carried his head fearlessly. He was not like those furtivelooking men with the eyes that avoided a direct gaze, any more than Nora was like the cheap, over-dressed women. Andrew and Nora lived their own lives amid the winter population. Yes, they would be sorry to go. The summer had been long and pleasant. The people had been pleasanter and kinder than usual. They had made friends with some of the fishing people and the animals. The air, even in October, was not languid. It was living and pure and strong. The narrow streets of the town were evil-smelling. The sun hardly struck down between the high houses; there were abominations underfoot among the uncleansed cobble-stones. They met M. Ie Facteur coming down the theatrical -street, with its colored walls and grcen-and-white shutters. M. \e Facteur was trolling a song in a rich baritone. It was like a scene in an opera; the rcd-and-blue uniform of the gendarme, the white cap of an old woman sitting in the midst of her butter and eggs in a long country cart, added to the illusion. M. Ie Facteur swept off his blue cap to Monsieur and Madame with a flash of white teeth. He had left a letter for Monsieur at the hotel. The letter excited no anticipations. It was not time for the small quarterly dividends on which the Despards lived. Between the arrivals of those their post-bag was apt to be scanty and uninteresting. Sometimes one of those chance acquaintances would write or send a newspaper. An English newspaper, even if it were old, was a great boon to Andrew. In the entresol of the hotel they found the letter— a blue official-looking letter. While Andrew took it and turned it about, wondering whom it could be from before opening it Noras attention was otherwise engaged. There was a placid' rosy, middle-aged woman sitting in the entresol amid a pile of luggage. On her lap was a beautiful dark-haired, dark-eyed child, a boy of about three years old. Who could -these belated amvals be? Why, they were as much out of place at the hotel as would be swallows flying homeward in autumn Nora looked at the child and the child at Nora. The boy laughed, and then hid his face in his nurse's comfortable breast with a bewitching shyness. Nora put cut her arms to him' They were comfortable arms for children, as many children knew. The nurse coughed, and then spoke. .' Be you Mrs. Despard, ma'am?' she asked. The accent was a West-country accent ; Nora only knew that it was pleasant and homely. ' Yes; I am Mrs. Despard,' she said; but just then Andrew broke in with a sound between a laugh and a sob. He was holding the letter in a trembling hand. nHH lw hy ' 6 Said * ' PoOr Dick « the P° or fellowJ How odd that we should have been talking of him ! The kind' fellow to remember us all this time ! This must be Dick's child. Do you understand, Nora?' He 'was holding out the letter to her. Poor Dick is dead. He has asked us to take the child. This little man 1S heir to a great fortune. Dick gives us the care of the child and a big income-a^big income, "to keep him with. He asks us to buy back Dysart, to rebuild it for the heir But he thinks of the child with us at * Bawn Rose See, here is a copy of .the poor fellow's will. The letter is from Knight, Osborne, and Barrow, of Lin6oln's Inn Fields This good woman is anxious to get back to her own husband and child, once she has fulfilled her trust. She fostered the child' littfc Dick, too. The Jawyers thought it the best thing they could do was to send her on to us as soon /as they had ascertained our addfes*. .

Nora, in speechless wonder, held out her afms to the child, and he came to her. He put his arms about her neck. He was of her own kin. If her boy had lived he might have been such another as this one. 'She looked at the nurse halfjealously.._ She wanted to have the child to herself. 'You have fulfilled your trust splendidly,' she said. Norahad the air of a great lady. That had never fallen away fromher. .'.You were very good to bring us the child across the world,' leaving your own home to do it. My cousin, Mr. O'Moore, must have had great ." confidence in you, and it was well founded. ' -■ ' Mr. O'Moore put me and- mine be)-orid the reach of want for ever,' the woman said. 'In a -year or two we look to come home to Devonshire and buy a. little farm with what he gave us. There is nothing I wouldn't do for the child or the poor gentleman that's gone.' ' You arc in a hurry to get back?' ' I have my passage taken by Saturday's boat. I look to see some of the old people in Devonshire betwixt now and then.' ' Why, you shall go by the evening boat,' Nora said, secretly delighted. ' I don't think the child will make strange with us.' " ' Anyone would think he'd "known you from the time he was born,' the nurse said, admiringly. ' You know that it means Bawn Rose,' Andrew said later to his wife. He was in a daze over his own_good forlune.'over the wonderful salvation that had come to thenV after all those years. He had to say it over to himself, he wanted to have" it said to him, to bring the realisation nearer. ' I know that it means Bawn Rose,' Nora said in a deep voice of happiness. « More, I know that it means the child.' She was standing looking down at the boy in his little cot. He was fast asleep. She had her sleeves rolled above her elbows, and her arms were yet white and round. She had given the boy his bath before she put him to bed, and the unwontcJtask had brought the color to her face. Why, what change had come over everything! The hotel, with all its echoing spaces, was no longer desolate. The wind that cried around the house was no longer the keen of a banshee. It made one think" how pleasant it would be to go home to one's own fireside. Home! How exquisite the word sounded! They were going home to Bawn Rose, to Bawn Rose! How good God was! God bless poor Dick, the kind fellow who had requited the pain she had given him long ago by giving her Bawn Rose and the child ! 4 If I were to wake up to-morrow morning, Andrew, and find that it was all a dream, and that we had to go to the Rue des Herbalistes after all, I believe I should die of it ' she said. Andrew placed his hand over his eyes as he looked at her. 4 You are a pretty woman still, Nora,' he said. ' The joy has brought your youth back.' . 4 I shall have to be young,' she said, ' to play with him ' indicating the child. - Katherine Tynan, in the Catholic Weekly.