WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 12 September 1925, Page 13

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

WOMEN’S SMILES . BRIDGE THE YEARS.

XT is unsettling to realise tiiat the world is full of girls we might have married if ... if ... . .Now and again we meet them, and' it is surely one of the strangest experiences in life (says a writer in an English exchange;. You may be walking down the street as a motor-car pulls up, and a strange woman leans out, saying: “Isn’t it Jim;” and you reply, “Yes, but I . . .” and fumble for words, quite confused, kicking yourself and your bad memory for names and faces. “Don’t you remember me?’’’ “Of course I do. Weren’t you at Aunt Mary’s last summer ?” “No, you’ve forgotten! I’iii Alice!”. Alice? Alice? Alice? Alice? You look dully at the laughing, sparkling woman before you—so obviously some one’s happy wife —and then, flashing up out of your subconsciousness, springs the memory of Alice. Alice of the two tight plaits of redbrown hair, Alice who swore she’d marry you when you Were 20, Alice who kissed you suddenly and unaccountably in* the vicarage garden one November night, and frightened you so that you never, never forgot that night. “This is my son.” A big boy, obviously like his father, shakes hands with you, and you grope and grove! and whirl in a million memories. Tittle Alice! Unbelievable! “You must come and dine some night, Jim ! Now write down my ’phone number. We’ll laugh over old times. Good-bye! ’ ’ “Good-bye, sir,” says the boy who might have been" your son if... ~if . . . if . . . And the motor-car purrs off into tlie mystery of the busy day. That’s how it goes. Or it may happen like this: “Yes, it must be sixteen years since we met,” says the woman’s voice over the telephone. “I heard of you quite by chance Oh. I’d- love to! Ycs, three o’clock. How shall I know you ? ” “Well, I’m wearing a blue suit- and a brown, kind of tie, and a rather old hat turned down in front.!’ “And I’m wearing a little black hat and a brown costume, with a white gardenia, which isn’t real, by the way. Do you think you’ll know me! Goodbye. or—Jim!” (When she first, rang up she called you MR..Browm!) Do you think you’ll know'her? Frankly, you don’t. Sixteen years ago you were seventeen. You were* at scliooi. She was seventeen. She had just left school. For two years she had filled the entire universe. It was she who first awakened you to emotion, she whose grace and beauty left you breathless with unspeakable things, duimb with wonder, thrilled at the Gates of Life which seemed to swing in the sound of her voice, the sheen of her hair, and in the bit-ter-sweet joy of her nearness. . Oh, the ache of 'this intense inexperience, this youthful worship, this calf love — an ache parents, cannot, comprehend, having forgotten so much —-a blind adoration unalloyed by passion. Love’s growing pains! As you go to shake hands with yourself over a brink of sixteen years,

BOYHOOD’S LOVES COME BACK

something of the old dead wonder comes alive in your heart. You remember that you never dared to, kiss her. (But worshipping her- gave you a pretty good grounding in English poetry!) How did you lose her? You forget. Perhaps you took up photography, and gradually forgot her,'for the fierce aches of' youth - are swiftly healed, by a camera, a bicycle, or a dog. You look round the lounge. Any of these waiting women might be she. You watch them closely, wondering., Sixteen years between you, at the other end a wild worship that seemed deathless; at this end —you can’t even remember the shape of her nose or the colour of her eyes. ... “How do you do? Why, Jim you haven’t changed a bit!” A tall, elegant woman holds out her hand to you. iTou don't recognise her. “Sylvia?” you ask doubtfully with a little odd thrill. “Yes, Sylvia!” she laughs. You admire the poise of her figure, and a dozen things which escaped you- sixteen years- ago. Her , eyes have not altered. Grey. You remember now. Beneath the full dignity of the woman you spy out the ghost of the girl you knew, hiding there still. She • rattles on through luncheon telling you family history, names you have forgotten, . that Uncle George is eighty-three, that Aunt Emily is a cripple, that Phyllis, who was a; tiny child sixteen -years since, married five years ago, and went to New York . . . and all the time you are thinking of those old heart/sore times, remembering the day she put her hair up for fun, and how you begged her to take it down because it made her look so grown-up and unattainable, remembering the hours you spent mending bicycle - punctures to win a smile from her, hours with her in church when she had religious mania, and. oiit of the past (so funny now, but tragic then) moves the figure of an egg-faced curate- who treated- you like a ehildY and, standing beside the piano, turned "y over her music for her till you could , have torn him limb from- limb. Something held you back; you had a lion's heart in the body of a lamb. That is youth’s tragedy! “Do you know, Sylvia,” you say lightly over coffee, “I was crazy about you when I was a kid. Did you know? ’’ “Well, not exactly. You were very shy. You were a. funny boy. Give me a cigarette. . . ” “Youth is a dumb, pathetic thing, isn’t it? I used to write awful bad ; poetry to you once. I burned a whole box of it before I was married.” “We were funny children. X . . ..... was in love with you, too.” Y’ou watch her go off, tall, elegant, poised, into the crowd, and the surge of life comes 'between you and hides her as the years came between you and . hid her. Then you think what a strange hapr ... hazard business life is, how many roads there are a' man may take, for the one he chooses. - , . ■ An(L you, sigh and 'laugh-, and come out of the mist- of youth into the reality of the life you have made.