The ODD ANGLE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 81, 6 April 1943, Page 2

The ODD ANGLE

■■ ■■" • ■ By MacCLURE 9 ROADS OF DESTINY "He will be here at ten o'clock,"the poor, feeble old soul who let us in told us. Would we make ourselves at home? First, though, she insisted on showing us up to "his room." "It's never been touched since he left it—except, of course, for me dusting it. See? His books and pamphlets, just as he left them. In that old chest of drawers are the few bits of things he owned before— before " We nodded understandThe worn, patched dungarees hanging behind the door told their own story; the well-thumbed copy of Harry Holland's "Calvary or Armageddon" told its own, too, as did also the backless edition of Karl Marx that lay on the mantelpiece. We ' shuddered as the old dame quietly left us to our thoughts. Old Alf picked up O. Henry's "Roads of Destiny" and opened it as if to find the formula for this transformation. Came a knock at the front door, a sharp, insistent knock, the knock of a man who knows what he wants and intends to get it. "I knew that some day you would come and visit your old friend," we heard the old dame saying to him. "They always do when its to election time," Alf whispered. © THE HALO "So," he greeted us as the old soul, panting with suppressed excitement, showed him up to the little back room where he and I, and all of us, had dreamed dreams in the long ago. "Be seated, gentlemen." Here he waved in the royal manner he had of late years adopted. "Just like the old days, eh?" His keen eyes took in our R.S.A. badges and he hesitated slightly,' then glanced out of the window at the little garden that old "Pop" had struggled so gallantly "to lick into shape" despite his one leg. "Well, they've got vegetables, anyway—just shows you what industrious folks can do if they've a mind to," he said smiling. " 'Pop' and her ought to be well fixed now they're on the age-benefit." "Like old times, eh?" he added, although with less enthusiasm. "Yes, like old times," Alf replied. " 'The Three Musketeers ' " He liked that and drew himself up erect and as he stood thus a golden shaft of sunlight caught the cobweb above his head transfiguring it till it shone like a halo around his head. " 'The Worker's Friend,'" I quoted from the card he had handed' us. His face hardened. "I don't think I like the way you said. that, Mac," he commented. "But it is true, isn't it?" I queried. "Er, of course," he agreed, but in the momentary silence I thought I caught the sound of the many waters that had flown under the bridge over the years. 9 THE MARTYR "Come," he said, picking up his hat, "this place gets on my nerves." I had known it would. We followed him to his luxurious suite in the hotel. He suddenly remembered he had forgotten to say good-bye to his old landlady. "That's all right— you'll meet her again on election dav," I told him. He rang and the steward brought in some sherry"Remember those terrible days of my martyrdom, Mac?" he asked as he changed into a lounge suit. He sighed and we both sighed with him. "Those seemingly endless days' when I lay naked and athirst," he said, "with practically nowhere to turn for a meal and a bed." I reminded him that the old dame had let our board run on indefinitely. "You'll get work some day," she had said, "then you'll be able to repay me." "Yes, yes," he replied impatiently, "but, man alive, think of it, think of the agony of having to look on and see your own mates compelled to struggle eternally, ground down under the iron heel of capitalism, eating away the souls of our class, continuously ground underfoot by the hellish system—" He gulped his sherry. One could see his very soul was sick when he remembered those things. © SCRAPS OP PAPER Sipping our sherry there in his luxury suite we tried to hear, as he put it, "The wailing of the women as they sat around empty tables throughout the land in the days before we took over." Personally I didn't hear the wailing, but I do not doubt he did; he had that sort of imagination. As he continued I saw the horrible mangled heaps of flesh the soulless capitalists left after they had, as he inelegantly put it, "put the boot in, gr—r—rinding the worker under his hellish heel." Those pallid faces in the street. "Ah! What was it Henry Lawson had said about those faces in the street, Mac?—No matter." He shuddered at the remembrance of them. "Toiling, ever toiling, ever hoping—.", Tears filled his eyes. "Stop. You're breaking my heart," I said. Without ; that halo effect of back there in the little room he looked very much like . the average politician; a little more prosperous, perhaps. Back in the room from which he had evolved to his present dazzling heights we found the old dame gathering up the books and socialistic pamphlets he had left behind. "I thought I'd send them to the waais paper depot—every scrap of paper counts, they say," she re- ' marked. "Yes, he'll never need them again," I said. A passing ; shadow had transformed the cobweb ( in the corner into an ugly thing in '. which moths fluttered momentarily s and then died.