The Clutch of Circumstance.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 134, 8 June 1910, Page 11

The Clutch of Circumstance.

Or, A CHANGED HORIZON

CHAPTER X. , . PRINCIPALLY PAROCHIAL. The yellow sulky was slowly climbing the Three Hill Ei.se, which steep bit of elevation had to be surmounto-d ere one could get away from the sleepy leisure of Wyama and plunge into the more bustliiig- life of iSurwumbn.

Currant took his own way, and plodded up in his peculiarly dreary and dogged fashion, Mrs. Boattie sitting with the reins loose in her lap, but mechanically murmuring "Get, up" from time to time as a matter of duty.

The lady felt as much at peace with the world as constitutionally she ivas able. A few things rankled —her servant after breakfast had scraped a hole in the enamel of the new milk toiler, one of the stops of the organ had suddenly refused to act, and Bobbie, her second son, had climbed a tree in his new school suit, and left three square inches of the tweed of it on a fork of a high bough. But in the main the srorld -was going smoothly. The stipend fund was practically made up this quarter -without any humiliating necessity of themselves being obliged to help get up a concert or a bazaar to make the figures stretch, to the rightful number.

BY ETHEL TURNERAuthor of "Seven Little Australians."

IVlrs. Wharfcon had given—and without undue pressure —fifty pounds to the building fund for the new school-room, end several lesser amounts had been promised with positive cheerfulness. True, a sale of work would be necessary to complete the amount that was required before the trustees would consent to begin operations, but when a sale of tvork was not for her husband's stipend arrears. >Irs. Bfiattie quite enjoyed it. It involved hard work, it was true, but it brought the parishioners into friendlier touch with each other than anything else. At the last one, for instance, jMiss Dwycr. the baker's niece, "who gave music "essons. and bad never ■before subscribed a penny to any church object, sent in to the Children's Clothes stall a beautifully smocked frock. Everyone knew tha.t the fine stitching had been meant for a little niece, but Miss Dwyer and the little niece's mother having quarrelled violently a week before the bazaar, the Children's Clothes Stall imexpectedly reaped the benefit. The little garment ■ —it tvas positively a triumph of intricate smocking—was snapped up by the Doctor's ■wife for her small girl, but ■when the same small girl was seen in it at church the following ■week, the second party to the quarrel, the mother of the denuded little niece, was so overcome at the sight that she owned herself humbly in the wrong to Miss Dwyer before the church gate was reached. The result, Rot an immediate one, for smocking, interlarded Tvith crotchets and quavers and minor scales, takes time, was that a twin frock ap-

peared in church on Sabbath mornings,

and all was peace, or as near peace as might be obtained fa any parish. You could not stay .to worry o-ver the circumstance that the Doctor's wife did not like the duplication of a garment she had been pleased to consider exclusive, and sat down a little sulkily to make her child another frock for church.

Then there was Miss Elizabeth's enshion. Miss Elizabeth, urged possibly by the presence of so much, art on the hill, conceived the idea of "'going in for stencilling." After she had stencilled a border -of attenuated waratahs round the morn- > ing-room table cloth, and a "new art"

design in each comer of her own bedspread, and tulips up and down her own window curtains and irises at irregular intervals along , the walls of a back passage, she came rather to a standstill. Mrs. W-harton ha-d much too profound a contempt for anything Elizabeth could do in the art line to allow her to touch with profaning fingers anything for the important rooms of the house. If this stencilling—silly, monotonous work she considered it herself—were really the latest thing in decoration, and if the irpholsterer who did much work from time to time in the Wendover drawingroom, considered it suitable, well, they would have an art decorator up for a day or two, and have the thing done properly. Bnt this messing, amateur work of Elizabeth's was not to be taken seriously. Sholto—big, warm-hearted lad —touched at the eight of Elizabeth's nose, which, at the snub, assumed its wonted pink aspect, promptly invited her to 'come and operate on the frieze in his bedroom, it was the only undecorated frieze in the house, and had been left in a state of plain cream plaster at the boy's own request, for he said to wake and look np and find ships sailing, or maidens dancing, or trees sprouting right up against his ceiling would be enough to

unhinge his mind in the early hours.

Xater in the day, he said, the mind, ihad more fortitude, and could bear up against suck shocks. But the poor little pink nose unmanned iim, and lie gave Elizabeth's arm a warm squeeze.

""If it will promise faithfully not to break its little neck on the step-ladder, and if if will pat hay or ouions or whatever the proper thing is to take the smey of paint away, it shall come and iave a go at my wall, so it shall," he said.

"But you won't like it, will you?" Elizabeth said, doubtfully. "like it no end," he returned, stoutly. Tin much impressed by what you say. Anyone can have a podgy paperhanger's patterns on his walls, but it isn't everyone who can bestow a touch of irresistible individuality to a room." Sholto was delighting in an alliterative vein of late.

So Elizabeth, her heart warmed by the permission, set out to bestow the touch. For a week all was well. She was merely thinking out her design. She felt as possibly Raphael felt when, after being confined to relatively small work for long, the Pope handed over to him the fresco decoration of the Camera della Segnatura. All space seemed hers, and she went about with eager eyes searching ior patterns till it seemed she saw men as stencils walking. Finally she settled on her design. ißrown tree boughs conventionalised to dip and meet at certain points; at each ipoint two doves sitting peaceably. "I'm trying to get the effect of perfect peace and rest', so suitable for a bedroom," she had said, the fire of art ibnrning in iher light blue eyes. Down each corner of the room a tree trunk was to be

stencilled, as if sprinking luxuriantly I from the floor or skirting-board, and i feacHng up to the frieze, where it ■would j Bend its carefully measured branches all tojA)f innumerable

carefully measured birds to sit upon. Even 'the putting of the stencil, though rather a large piece of work, was surmounted. And then came the application. "It is such rapid work, once tlie pat/tern i 3 cut," Elizabeth said, "that I hope to be finished by to-night, But if 1 should want an extra day you won't mind sleeping in one of the spare rooms for just one night, will you?" But three fteeks, four weeks, -five weeks passed, and there were only two tree trunks done and two sides of the frieze. A start was indeed made on the third side, and the bough design was completed, but the ties of the birds had broken, and Elizabeth was too tired and discouraged to make a fresh bird stencil, so the remaining points gaped empty. Indeed, the whole effect' was extremely dispiriting, and when the ardent decorator climbed down finally from the steps, which she had mounted on top of a heavy table, her poor little nose went pink with mortification. She had plainly held the stencil crookedly, for some of the turtle doves sat two or three inches higher than their fellows. And were they turtle doves at all? Sholto could not be persuaded that they were not intended for fowls roosting, and gravely pointed out the fact that she had given them two legs apiece, whereas everyone knew that roosting fowls only possessed one. Details of the great scheme were splashes of brown paint here, and there on the lower wall, brown paint on the linoleum, brown paint on the ■bed curtains and the chairs and the ward-

robe mirror. For a fortnight the heavy table and the steps and the little pots of paint and the sheets of cut tin congested the

room. "Jf you don't finish, I'll get it done at your expense," Sholto threatened. '"Of course I am going to finish. Anyone is liable to a few mistakes," Elizabeth said. Another fortnight passed. "If you don't finish I'll finish it myself," said Sholto. "I'm sick of sleeping in spare rooms; I'm beginning to feel like a stranger within the gates." "I told you I am trying to cut new stencils; don't be so impatient," said Elizabeth irritably. And at last she had them cut through; indeed, she had quite lost interest in the work, and but for exposing herself to the family's laughter she would, have called in a professional long before this. When she at last put on a big protective apron, and set out for the loom, she found it locked. "Mr. Sholto's had it locked for more'n a week," volunteered a maid; "wouldn't even let mc in to give it its cleaning on Wednesday." Elizabeth waited for the boy's return and asked for the key. He beat up all the family and bade them come and look. "Just a few little notions of my own," he said depreeatingly; and, unlocking, displayed them. In the spaces where the birds should have been he had.painted opossums hanging by their tails to the boughs. Up the tree trunks he..had native bears climbing, each with a young one on its back. Six or seven kangaroos loped in fine style across the fourth wall, while the remaining places were filled in with here a kookaburra, there a platypus, here two emus, there a native cat. He had pressed Mr. Erwin into the joke, and that gentleman had ontlined the creatures with his left hand while Sholto sat beside him turning them into stencils with the result that met Elizabeth's stricken gaze. E*m Mrs. Wharton had to smile. '"But to-morrow," she said, "well send for Jackson and have the place freshly kalsomined —if they can kalsomine over that dark paint. If not, he must paper it all over." '•'Who steals my purse steals trash," said Sholto. '"but he who filches my frieze from mc I'll shoot on the spot." And he was so obdurate in the matter that Jackson was called in only to cover up the splashes on the lower wall, and Elizabeth's frieze remained and became quite famous. But it sent her back to less soaring work-:—the cushion, in fact, that Mrs. Beattie, jogging up the hill behind Currant, considered had helped to promote the peace of the parish. It was of beautiful design, and Elizabeth grew so enamoured of it as she worked on it that it was a real wrench to hand it over, as promised, to the fancy work stall. She hung near it half the day of the sale watching to see who the purchaser might be. A Mrs. Patterson, it was, a bitter-tongued woman, who had estranged nearly everyone from her, and lived a lonely life in a cottage just out of the town. The Whartons had hardly spoken to her for years. But when Elizabeth saw her buy the cushion, buy it quite, eagerly, and speak with praise about its "novelty," all old sores were forgotten, and Elizabeth actually went and invited her to have tea with her in the marquee outside, and paid the double charge with reaJ pleasure* (To be continued next Saturday.)