THE CALL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 237, 7 October 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE CALL.

,'(By Elsa Fig veil, P.O. Box 313, Hawera 16.)

Althea was always half-hearing music —never quite. Somehow it passed. She would hear it from the hills in spring, ■when the cool winds came piping across the meadows; she would hear it si"h from apple orchards where daffodils were swaying beneath blossomy trees; she would hear it in the night;, when she looked up at the calmly-gliding moon and the satin-sheeny sky; she would hear it echoing among the bushes around an old, memorv-haunted house. Sometimes she would hear it when she thought of strange and wildly lovely scenes, the envisioning of which came* easily to her, which she seemed to have remembered from the very earliest times, and which yet had no part of memory, for she had, never seen them—craggy purple hills; still and silent lakes in the hearts of mountain ranges, unrippled and wonderful; waves ciurling in the moonlight on shingly strands, far away; white roads winding hill wards; vast plains red with sunset's glow. She told Loma about it once; Lorna who was her best friend. She had smiled with a little air of incredulous astonishment. ' ■ "I expect," she said, "you have just imagined it. . . "

"It's true," Althea persisted. "I really do hear something. It's like the echo of bells ringing."

Lorna had raised her black brows and changed the subject. Althea had felt hurt. Of course Lorna did not —could not understand, but she need not have been so very unbelieyiiig. After that, the friendship grew less warm. Althea 110 longer sought to confide in anyone, and drew away more by herself, forever pondering and puzzling. Shs was a strange child, so agreed all her acquaintances. "Odd'" and "unchildlike'' were the adjectives they applied to her. It was true; she was different from other children; if she had had ..anyone to cbnlide in, anyone to understand her, it would have been different; but her mother was dead and her father busy. The old housekeeper was kindly, but prosaic, and Althea knew Instinctively that she would not sympathise with her strange fancies —or were they fancies? Lorna sho had almost adored, with a. strange longing after friendship and all that it meant, but Lorna had failed her.

Sometimes it frightened her, the ringing that came at sudden moments of the day and night, a. faint echo like bells ringing, as she had said. Always it created within her a sense of unrest. She felt as if it was calling her —urging her to do something, though what that something was she knew not. She grew lip with a puzzled crease between her brows.

One day, when she was just 14, she had been out rambling alone across her father's farm, wandering over hills and through valley's, alone but happy. She was one of those who, though athirst for human friendship, yet could enjoy solitude. Of course, it was not always that the vague sound of music came to disturb her. On this day her thoughts were with the birds that flew upwards singing, the young lambs that frolicked on the hillsides and the fresh springtime loveliness of fields and trees.

She came running home across the paddocks, singing to herself, half-dancing, half-skipping. The wind had tousled her short, waym brown curls, and whipped a fresher colour into her soft cheeks. Her hazel eyes, always dreamy, held a gladsome light.

Near home she stood and turned gazing toward the west, still skipping lightly 011 her toes. The sun was setting, and was just above a low-browed hill; its light was strangely intense, almost bronze instead of golden, and fell mellowly over the sward, bringing out the rich, warm brown tints of broken, clayey banks and bare batches of earth. A thrush was singjng in a bush near the house, "calm-throated," clearly sweet; the lambs were '"till frisking out on the hillsides, and white mists were creeping up from distant valleys. The sky was blue and shining; if one looked up at it great thoughts came winging down like dewy-plumaged birds. All suddenly, in the midst of Althea's delight ;it so fair a scene, the ringing came. She shrieked, and held her' hands to her ears, half-merry, half-vexed; but it was a. sound no amount of muffling could keep away—perhaps it came from within, after all, though it seemed to come from afar. The same yearning, 'inpatient unrest stirred in her heart. Then in a moment she had realised, and had gone nirmi-nor 'toward the house in eager ha (e.

"After all this time," she exulted, "T know! | 'must write —write! Pencil and pa per, where are you Oh. the sunSot—the l>i!>". mellow" rays —the thrush --how f :Isa!I r put it 7" No in-:- 1 in,- such a question. Words eaine Hocking, crowding into l:er mind words, rhymes, stanzas —a whole poem. When it was finished she danced gladly to the window. A poem! She had written a poem! In later days she was to laugh at that poem as full of weaknesses, hut at the moment it seemed almost the finest poem in the world.

She had written it in answer to a call, she had. discoveved the meaning ' of that echoed sound; in short, she had yielded to the urge that comes to so many, and will not let then; rest till they have answered it, and always remains as a. goad urging them over to fresh action. She had answered the call of "the demon poesy."