A Complete story

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 50, 16 December 1925, Page 9

A Complete story

(By Leonora Eti.es, in T.P.'s and Cassell's Weekly.)

All his life he had been frightened of death; in the churchyard, when he went clinging tightly to his mother’s hand on Saturday afternoons with great armfuls of white flowers for the altar, he used to see the old, old graves. Like great stone boxes, they were covered with moss. One of them was actually broken across the top’ by the strength of the ivy that had burst out of the ground underneath it, after travelling in the darkness for yards, away from its parent stem. That broken grave terrified him. “I’m frightened that you’ll die and be put in a big box, mummy,” he used to say; and then his mother would talk to him of the mystery of the resurrection. “Very early in the morning they came to the grave to bring flowers and spices, and they found the grave empty. Their Lord had risen, darling, and because He rose from the grave, everyone else will somo day.” “But these poor people can’t see the sunshine!” the little boy would protest, and read on the stones “In affectionate remembrance of Mary Barnes, who entered into rest January 3, 1854,” and think of Mary Barnes there, hidden under the heavy stone boxes, Then his mother would take him into the fields and make cowslip balls, and they would-' listen to the village lads playing on the green, shouting and bawling just as though death never crept up to the edge of life at all. And sometimes, when he talked of the poor dead people, his mother would hold his hand very tightly, and they would walk together underneath the great lime trees that avenlied the church path; and the Sweetness of the limes, and the fairy-like spin of their little winged seed pods would make him la ™ h l 0 ™ 6^. 63 ’ , . 1110 **** thin S of all was when they went into the church field, and he climbed the great beech tree. He loved that beech tree—an old, old great-great-grandfather of a tree, so old and so sturdy that it had pushed down the churchyard wall with its great trunk,

TREE OF RESURRECTION

THE STORY OF A MOTHER AND SON.

and formed part of the wall itself. There, on the smooth bark was his mother’s initial cut —“R. B.” “But it isn’t B now, mummy. “It’s M,” he would say, looking with something like awe at the work her mischievous childish fingers had done. And one day, after the B she cut M, and then his initials— R. M. “I used to climb this tree when I as a little girl,” she would say, with a dreamy look in her soft eyes. “Sometimes I used to hide in it, like King Charles hid in the oak tree. I made myself a little house up there. I was always a shy, lonely little thing, Robbie. You take after me. . . . When vidtors came I used to climb the tree and hide, I took some boards up and made a little platform. I wonder if it’s there now!” She couldn’t climb up herself, in her long, Victorian skirts, so Robbie reached up with her help to the lower branches, and presently ha was hidden in the sheen of the fluttering leaves. “Yes, yes! Mummy, it’s there! Your littie house!” From that day he made his mother’s cubby house his own. “I can hear you talking to me when I’m up there, mummy! I can hear you saying poetry.” That was because one day, she had told him she had learnt “A dear little girl sat under a tree” while she was sitting in her little house one day. , , , ( A sad life they had, mother and son; they made each other’s horizon, each other’s refuge, and each other’s life. So that, when she died it seemed as though his life had ceased, his horizon become clouded. She was buried under the churchyard wall in a new grave, and the little boy, not more than half alive, was sent away to school while his father, after a very little while, married again a woman much more suited to him than the fragrant poem of a woman who had been Robbie’s mother. No letters for the little

, ■:■;. ~;-.'■ ~.„:■/..:• ~■: /, —■ ■" ■:■■ ......... ............ ~.,.., ~ ..^ boy—just his 'bills paid, his wants supplied; * no tuck boxes, no one to be pleased when" he did well in his examinations; no holidays ex-... % cept those spent in the charge of masters. „■; .;% Sometimes he would come back and wander M about the churchyard; the broken grave was ''l covered in ivy now; over his mother's grave was a shining white angel. He hated it; heknew that his mother would not have liked p it; but there was a little place where he '?■ could plant lilies' of the valley, her favorite fragrant flower. Sometimes to walk beneath the limes was a comfort, for he seemed, for ;S an instant, to be a little boy again, carrying .■ sheaves of white stock and scarlet gladioli; \m but he could never climb the tree. ; | Many years passed, morbid, tragic years, : ;i haunted by that spectre of death always§§ stalking humanity he lived in a grave of his • own making; his mother's sweet faith never Jd spoke to him; she had seen only the empty tomb, and those in shining raiment sittingf| within when lovers brought the useless sweet*( spices to lay in the grave. He thought bf|| death and corruption; and why labor for g death to overtake one's speeding hands and M feet? At last his father died, and he, shivering m with apprehension, came to the village oneif evening for the funeral next day. Just the i same, that village; the same shouts from M the green as the lads played the same croon ofJ| doves in the rectory garden, the same fairy 3 flight of little airships* as the seed pods of "if the limes fell in the church avenue. His 3 father's body was being brought from miles away and would not arrive till to-morrow. Drawn irresistibly, he went to his mother'sf| grave. " /5.| The white angel had gone and was leaning : f against the church wall forlornly. The oM, $ old sexton had been at work under the beech I tree, and was sitting now eating bread and m cheese and drinking beer from a bottle, with 1 his back against the wall, looking out over | the green where the lads played. He did not j see the lonely man who crept silently towards | the beech tree, walking carefully so as not to tread on graves. He did not see him;; reach the side of an open grave, where the rich dark loam was piled and boards laid to tread upon. For minutes that seemed hours I the man hung back, afraid; at last, drawn! by some morbid fascination, he reached the side of the great dark hole and looked down, shivering. If only he could feel the touch of his mother's hand, guiding, so safe, so secure! If only he could hear that guiding voice of hers, so gentle, so wise. And all that was left was this dark hole. Kneeling down, while the soft soil sunk a little beneath his weight, he gazed in and stared and stared. ; . In the dark was a glimmer of light as something bright focussed the sunshine—thel name-plate on his mother's coffin I Bright and. shining; the old sexton had swept it clean. He was able to read it: "R B- - - May 3rd, 1867—June 10th, 1900."; Twenty-five years! A lifetime! Then, as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness he saw strange shapes in the grave—great, twining roots and tendrils wrapped right s round the coffin. He became aware of the old sexton behind him. P

r -il . "This is my mother's grave," he said simply. y.,j\ "Your mother, sir? Oh, yes. I remem£«,ber burying her. r I remember her when she r|~~~ was a merry little maid in a white pinafore. She used to make daisy, chains and put them H I in the graves for the poor dead people, she m ./"Said, while I was digging. -She made a great Kj] friend of mel was only a young fellow at f the time. She always used to say she want;j ed to be buried under this beech tree. ' Then #| I shall come, up and sit among the leaves, in : | the lovely sunshine. And all the birds will ■| be beside me, just like the doves from the ;;| rectory come when I hold out corn in my sj, hands for them.' A nice little maid she was, I ' sir." I "Look at the roots!" said the man in a I whisper. "Wrapped right round the coffin." "Yes, sir. They always do that here. I These great old trees—l never cut them if I I can help it when I dig a new grave. Seems I . to me, sometimes, as if they're a ladder." •I' - The old sexton took off his two earthy J boots, put on others, and hobbled towards I the church, and still the man stood there. ..'§...- At last the twitter of birds made him look | up into the great dome of greenery above | him. | "Mother's little house! , I wonder if it's i still there?" he thought, and, leaving the :| dark hole and the disturbed earth, climbed V the tree, not so easily now, for his limbs had j set and stiffened. He was growing older. :'| Yes, it was still there; the boards were | rotting and had grown right into the wood ;.| of the ever-growing tree. He sat down in a I fork of the branches and closed his eyes. A "-'- church bell stopped, the flutter of leaves | whispered to him, and the distant shout of I playing children. Peace was stealing about ■i . him, quietness wrapping him round. | "Oh, mother! If only you hadn't died I j shouldn't have made such a mess of things!" he whispered, and as he leaned, the hard )_ 'branches of the tree became soft and peacev able as her breast when he was a little boy. J "I've thought of you dead all these years >) f. The still, small voice ceased to flutter, be- ;; came articulate. v" "And they found the stone rolled away from the mouth of the sepulchre. And they entered in and found not the body of the ..' Lord. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold two men X stood by them in shining raiment and said . f unto them, Why seek ye the living among % the dead? He is not here but is risen. . ." *' The leaves whispered and fluttered; presently he fell asleep, comforted. Later, when v the moon cam© up and cast long, inky shadiji^owS;; about the churchyard, he came down from the tree.. But he did not look again '■■ . into the empty grave. He went out into the ■nil land of the living, the land of sun and moon and flowers and tears and laughter, and i -;,. thought no more of death as an enemy dog- ":\ .gihg him. . • j | -:<^-—^>_—_. |§*£ ~|lt. is great folly not to part with your II: .^ own faults, which is possible, but to try I instead to escape other people's faults which •'5- ■ is impossible. Marcus Aurelius.