THE LOST DREAM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE LOST DREAM.

TWENTY YEARS AFTER. A SEA CHANGE. (By M.E.S.); Undeniably the journalist belonged to the Edwardian or sentimental school. Therefore, when, somewhat in middle life, he married, he said to his wife, *For our very first holiday we will rethe scenes of my youth ... I tnow a spot" . . . and then became lyrical.

Ftobi the wealth of his adjectives and the ecstasy of his interjections, the lady finally disentangled a few facts, and they were enougli to cause her some misgiving. In his boyhood, it seemed her husband had been in the habit of going to some remote spot that appeared, to combine all the joys of Arcadia with tho voluntary exclusiveness of Crusoe's island. The beach was of that East Coast variety of sand that may, with tho license allowed to journalism, bo described as golden; certainly in the magic light of sunset it stretched pale and gleaming, save where at the edge of the water tho sky was caught and reflected in a dozen lovely opal hues.

Behind the beach, and beyond the small green plateau on which the farmhouse stood, rose the hills, bushclothed, dark and aloof in the golden morning light. Through the forest trees ran little winding tracks made by the few stock that roamed it; there one- might press into the very depths of tho bush, where the ground was crimson with the fallen berries of tho puriri, green with a carpet of moss deep as a child's slumber; where the little streams ran softly in their stony beds or slipped silently past banks that were close hung with crimson ferns.

Happy Memories. And when at last the hill was climbed, there was a certain bare and rocky crag upon which the. traveller might perch and gaze at the panorama of blue and green sea, dark hills and yellow sand that stretch, bay upon bay and island after island, to a pale and mysterious horizon. At last, sated with beauty soothed and heart strengthened by that strange communion, the young man would spring up, and, because he was a boy and not a poet, would realise that ho was very hungry. So that, having clambered down that steep face, having plunged once more into the dim forest, ho did not wait to listen again to the

tui's song or tho murmur of the bush; instead his ears were eager to hear the * deep note of the cracked old cow bell with which the farmer's wife summoned her menfolk to dinner. For this Arcadia of the journalist's youth con-

tained no boarding house; only, if you were of the elect and "a friend of a friend of theirs," they would board you

at the farmhouse for a modest weekly

fee. "They didn't call you paying guests," boasted tho journalist. "None of that modern twaddle. But they treated you well and they fed you plainly but magnificently. ... I went .there three summers running and then "came the war. . . . Heavens! How young I was! It'll be like recapturing my youth to go there again." But his wife looked at him regretfully, for she knew that youth was one of tho few joys than can never be recaptured.

Back Again. It would be, it seemed, hard to get there; ho broke gently to his wife that she would have to ride. The train did not go within 40 miles of the- place. "There's a coach, of course —a service car, I suppose, it will be now. Even so, there's seven miles along the beach where they can't make a road. But wo can hire horses." f)nee again his wife looked thoughtful, and presently she ventured to suggest that 20 years was a long time; that places changed and people with them; that there were few spots now so remote and Arcadian as this sounded. He agreed, but quoted some stranger, casually met, who had spoken of it enthusiastically as "one- of the few places where one can still get away" . . . "Eut people's ideas of getting away are so different," she, demurred; but nevertheless wrote for information.

It wa3 a blow to find that the old farmhouse had been turned into a boarding house; their inquiries elicited a polite letter from a daughter of the farmer who was married but "kept on the old home as a guest house." The word displeased the journalist, but he remembered the writer —"the little one with long dark hair always tossing in the wind." So they booked rooms, and his wife said soothingly, "Anyway, February is never crowded at beaches, and with all that bush we should be able to be alone." The journalist was agog as soon as they neared the spot, taking a launch after the service car. "Thank heaven they haven't cut the bush. But surely there are - other houses?" His Wife said nothing, for her eyesight was keener than his and she knew that in another minute her hueband's dream would be dissipated for ever.

Change. For the dream beach was gone, and instead was a seaside resort. Certainly the sand was still golden, and a farseeing syndicate that had bought the land had' preserved most of the native bush. "Preserved" was the word, for it was stuck all over with little white notices just like the labels on a forest of jam-pots. They had fenced it in with a rustic fence and had cut wide "sylvan" walks all through its dimnes3 and its mystery The undergrowth had been cleared, and every here and there another larger clearing had allowed of the building of small bungalows of a conscientiously artistic and. woodland type. These were the aristocrats of the settlement, but there were dozens of others scattered all along the shore, perched on tb.<j rising ground, squatting on the sand. Their fences were draped with fashionable bathing apparel, and over this a multitude of small children below school age screamed and quarrelled.

Dominating all this, stood the guesthouses on the rising ground close to the bush. There were three of them, and before them spread large tennis courts that re-echoed with the play of young men in shorts and girls in beach pyjamas. The farmer's daughter wore boach pyjamas, too, and a wind-blown coiffure had taken the place of the dark curls with which the real wind had loved to play. She greeted the journalist pleasantly, if vaguely, but she was really hurt when he announced his intention next morning of leaving by the first launch. "Spoiled," she told her "guests," "and he used to be such a nice, natural boy. Suppose he finds this too quiet and simple for his taste nowadays ,_, . . "