THE OAK TREE

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 303, 23 December 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE OAK TREE

Third Prize Story

SUSAN was rather more imperious than usual that Christmas Day they all remembered so well. She demanded to be dressed prettily and pushed right out on to the verandah, where she could look down over the farm. Eighty years before she had been born this very piece of land that sloped so gently down to the river. Dinner was over, and they had all been home again sons and daughters, and their children, and their children. It had been a big day for Susan. Mary felt a little worried about leaving her alone as she wished to be. "You will call me if you feel cold, or if ynii want anything?" "Of course. Of course. I shall just sleep lii-re, and wnke and see the paddocks, and the trees I planted years ago. Then I ,-hii'l sleep again." \ou wont try to walk, or anything?" Mary did not like ,the look of rebellion"in ln'r mother's deep-set eyes.—eyes that had never grown old. "in my thoughts—yes," she said impatiently. "But with my old body—no. Co inside and leave an old woman. Can she not be alone with her thinking for once ?" "I'm sorry, darling. But you look naughty this a'fteriioon, as though you .-liotild not be trusted." -Piecious lot of mischief I can get into in this chair. Come here, child." Mary, aged 45, came obediently. Her mother pulled her face down to her own. She kissed her forehead. "Keep them away from me to-day," she said, her voice full of that strange quality Mary could always remember—a thrilling quality that had had power to move her to sudden tears. "They are a lot of milksops. They think I am oty and frail. I'm younger than any of them—except you. Funny—" She laughed with a sudden flash of humour—"l had to have 14 children before I reproduced myself. Only you and I know what it is to live." "Life has been a wonderful adventure to you, Mother, hun't it?" "Every moment of it. I look now to death to complete it. It is the only thing I have not done. Mary—-rememlber when you were little more than a baby how we used to play the 'Listening Garnet' Down on our hands and knees in the 'bush—listening for every tiny sound that came from the crickets, and ants, the spiders and grubs, llie birds and the wind in the trees?" Mary nodded. Her eyes were full of tears. "What were we looking fort What were we listening fort" "We wanted to hear life, in the process of living." "How very silly of ns," said Susan, 'when life can only be lived. I know it now," she said. "There i« up answer. There is only life itself —question and answer in nne." She wsa sflent, looking over her green a errs. Mary stood beside her, feeling "the bond of sympathy that wu between them like a chord of musie. ■" "There is only one way to tske life," Silvan said. "Like these fields take it. Krom the beginning of time they have been spread to the winds, the rains, and the sun. They have accepted everything as it has come to them." "Not passively," Mary said, aa if to ward off some ugly thought. "No— n o. Not as my other 13 children accepted life. But eagerly, hungrily, seeing from one season to the next in an end: less cycle. That is how X have lived it,* Susan said. "Many a time," she said, "I have walked down that track there to the river, racked with pain. I have thought: surely this is the winter of my soul. But, unlike the winter that comes to the earth, for me there will bo no spring. But that was a long time ago, before I learned that there is no sorrow so deep that it is bottomless; no joy but in the acceptance ot rain and snn, cloud-shadow and clear skies. "Tho earth," she said, her mind moving from one thought to another. "How 1 woulfl love to walk on it again. Think, Mary—erecy little handful so full of life. What ia in it, that with rain falling upon it, the «nn shining, -trees and flowers and jrnits and tnfty grass grow from it?" "What was in ear listening garnet" Mary sn^vcreli

Susan looked for a long time at tte fields and the hills and bush that were liers. "When I am dead," she chuckled, "my other children will ijiiarrei about this land, lliey will think that tliey can possess it. J he.v will want to cut it up, and put fences round it. and call it theirs. ißut I give it to you, Mary. You are tlie onlv one who will learn from it what I have learned. Bring Tony here. You have alwavs wanted him." "Mother—l—you—we can't do this thing. I hey would say you w ere too old to know your own mind." But I have done it. Years ago, I made a will and made this farm over to you, and enough to take you for a trip, or do as you like with, before you settle down, ion will marry Tony, when I'm dead?" "Mother—l do not want to think of such a time." ' Don t be silly. I have lived this part of my life. I am eager now for the next chapter. Don't be sfad about it. You will soon get used to being without me. Life is a living spring in you, as it is in me. Sit here and look across this earth if you doubt that life goes on for ever. Seeing the winds sweeping over the grass, and

8y... K. M. Knight

knowing how each season comes ill order and fulfilment, you must feel a part of it, and strong as rock." "I know, darling." "Of course. And Tony will help you. Nothing in Nature is alone, with such silly restrictions and prides. Without your father I could never have understood life as I do. We took everything as it came — good seasons and bad ones, failures and successes. We learnt that as it happened to the earth, so it would happen to us. We learnt patience, and that growth is an eternal law. In winter it was hard to believe, but year after year spring came again, and we learnt to smile at our lack of faith, and to wait calmly for the end of trouble, whatever it was. There were few troubles, when we learned to live for life and not for ourselves."

The sun shone all around them, and the rising tide in the river was shining through the gap in the hills. ° "Look how blue the water is," Susan ■aid. jf'And the row of cabbage trees along the ridge like pins in a bumpy brown cushion:" "The white shells are rfiining round Pudding Island," Mary said. "Poor darling—you cannot see that far." "I can remember. Mary—you -will marry Tony?" It was on Susan's mind. "Darling, he has no money. He has scruples about living on a woman's money." "Poof! What does it matter whose money it is, so long as you both live, and Work? I have lived too long," ehe said. "I have kept you from marrying that man. Twenty years ago you could have gone to him if it had not been for me»" "They have been lovely years, peaceful as Sunday afternoons. I would have 'been no happier with Tony. But now I think I shall be happier with him, beoatuse of them." "Then I can rest now," Susan said. "I am a little tired. Send Michael out to watch with me." „ Mary arranged her pillowe, »nd sent the little terrior out on to the verandah. He lay at Susan's feet, and Susan slept. She dreamed that she was a child again, with a blue ribbon in her hair, wandering on a windy day among the trees. She took an acorn and planted it on the edge of the garden—a treasured seed given hsr by a little boy. It was a grey day, and the bush was very sombre. It was a good day for

making a track down to the river. She would get her axe and cut a lot of the little trees away. . Damp? ferns, the ecent of the earth, 'moss growing, tangled, black sticks, the sound of wind in the trees, Ibirds calling, a little stream chuckling . . . she stood with her face towards the wind, and she could feel it lifting the hair from her forehead. She stirred in her chair, and opened her eyes. Then she closed them again. This time she dreamed she was older—almost a young woman, with her hair up and a ribbon-tied in it. It was nearly dark, and all along the hills there was a shining green light, making a steely-black line to cut them off from the sky. She felt wonglowingly alive; she was waiting for David. Her father had given them a hundred acres, sloping down "to the river. A farm, to grow trees and grass and fruit. To nurture cattle—calves and sheep, and soft-eyed horses who would become their friends. Oh, hurry up aqd go, time, she thought; then I shall see grasslands sloping away here, and a fine house, and gates —grey with sun and rain, and smooth to the touch. Susan did not open her eyes, but she thought: I am dreaming, and yet it all seems as though it were happening now. As though there were no yesterday and to-morrow, but only to-day. Surelv it was just ■'this morning that I married David and went home to my own house—one room made of palings, but warm to the rain and the wind. I used to wake in the night, and hear the soft rain falling so gently that 1 might have been a tree and the rain falling on my leaves.

David built me furryture, and a cradle with rockers on, so that our baby would have a little bed of its own. And then tjta fire came, and we had nothing—nowhere to sleep—and nothing to keep' the rain off. And we stood awed for aiitime, lookhig ajfc the blackened ruins of home, and then we both laughed, and said in one breath: "But suppose it had been you, or me? Why, it is nothing. We can build another house." And had laughed, our arms roundeach other. The years went on. More fields were brought into cultivation. A barn was built, the house made bigger, more babies were born. Susan took them into the fields to work with her, until they were old enough for school and the long walk there through the roughlv-cut track. She taught each of them to know the earth as she knew it, she thought. It was more important than anvthing anyone else ever taught them. She slept again, but fitfully, dreaming not consecutively, but from picture to picture. Now she would see 14 little faces round the other Christmas dinner tables— shining eyes, rosy brown cheeks, sturdy little bodies eager for her roast' turkeys and flaming puddings. Now she would be gathering plums from the orchard, and again a girl, riding for mail over the roug'.i track and through the river. Then she wouid be papering her first real house, built with attic bedrooms and lacy curtains, and a tiny hall. She walked through each room, glowing with pride, fhe pantry was full of preserves—bottles of purple plums, golden peaches and pears that gleamed

■white lilifi pearls. There were buckets of cream in the dairy—and great s]/kbs of butter and bowls of milk. she would be in the garden hoeing up kumaras, picking corn, great milk pans of peas, aprons full of apples that smelt of the sun and dried grass; or in a hayfield, turning the long rows of sweet hay while the sun shimmered and danced, and the tide came up -the river and shone blue through the gap in the hills $nd covered the white shells round Pudding Island. The day Matthew was drowned ... a Monday, and washing day, and that dreadful feeling that something was happening at the back of her mind. She kept going to the rails and calling the children to see if they were all right. It was in the afternoon that thfy brought him when she was getting in the clothes, white and sweei-smelling. They had put his little body down under a totara tree, and the tiny leaves were still sticking to his hands. Matthew, coming from school ... stopping to play in the Black Pond ... no longer a big boy when they gave him to her, but a baby again—her 'baby. They took him away, and with him a great piece of her, torn out of her heart by a rough hand. Susan saw again the days that the girls married, and the big table was not large enough to hold all the good things she had baked. Her friends who had grown up with her, and their children, all laughing and weeping and eatijig. Then the war, and five sons saying good-bye, one after the other, and only Tom and Harold coming home again, with beads and pictures and rosaries and wooden from Egypt and France. Susan opened her eyes. She expected to see daylight failing, but the sun still shone. She closed her eyes again. David -was dying. He had been ill for two days when they told her. It is not possible, she kept thinking. There is no life without him. Because he lives, the sun shines, and the rains fall, and there is growth, and season follows season. Without David it must all cease. She went for a walk down the paddocks It was a grey, windy day, like the day she liad planted the oak seed David had given her. The sound of the wind's voice came to her from every shrub, every tuft of grass, every tree. It swept across the fields, bending the grasses. Susan sat on a ridge of dried grass by some pine trees. They sang like the sea as the wind went through them. The scent of dried needles was warm to her nostrils. It was going to rain from the east. Soon these dry fields of hers would be drinking gratefully of the nourishing rain, and that which was dead would live again—brown, burnt grass, and thirsty trees. He cannot die while they live, she kept thinking. He and I have given so mucli life—to these fields, to our home, to the world. He cannot die while there is still rain to revive the earth, the sun stili shines. Unless they, too, die, David must live. Somewhere, somehow, he must live. It is not possible that he should die. She sat under the pine trees until late in the afternoon. Then she walked slowly back to the house. She stood for a while under the oak tree, and then went inside. It is true, she thought, that perfect love knows no fear. St. .John was right. Greater than David, and greater than me, is this third quality that has grown from us both. He cannot die, and I know it. She remained calm, while people buzzed about her, making arrangements. "So udden," she heard someone say. "Poor Susan—she is numbed with grief." But she thought: there is grief so great that it ceases to be loss, and becomes freedom. Of that they know nothing. . Susan went on dreaming, down the next 20 years of life with Mary; good, rich years, with David never very far away. In fact, sometimes he seemed hear at "hand, as he 'did- to-day. He kept on saying something about the oak tree —how it "had grown until It .took up nearly the whole garden. She heard: his voice now, saying: "Come and stand under it once again with me. Remember how we used to try to count all the birds' nests in it?" Susan thought perhaps she might. She herself laughing, youthful laughter that matched liis boyish, teasing voice. "But you "must give me your arm," she said. "I'm an old woman." "You—old? You crazy creature. You look as young as the day I married you, 60 years ago." Michael saw David come up tjie steps, take Susan's arm, and lead her back down the steps—tall and straight ag he had never seen her before. They walked round the garden, laughing, and pointing to the oak tree. At first Michael thought to join them, then he decided against it. Susan looked very happy; almost like a stranger; he decided she did - not need him, .so he curled up and went to sleep again by her chair. He could not understand why Mary, coming out a few minutes later, kept crying and saying: ° "But when I left her five minutes ago she was perfectly well." Michael simply couldn't understand what all the fuss was about.