HEART STORIES.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2478, 14 August 1903, Page 6

HEART STORIES.

[All Rights Reserved.]

Br BERNARD BAGNALL,

Away dawn the dingy street the rain swept pitileesly.dashing against the windows, sobbing to the wind's mournful wail.. The "grinding crash of steel, the thundering rush of the factory wheels, sounded harshly above the strife of the elements. Now and then a stray cor, kicked from shelter to shelter, pattered down the sloppy gutter wearily. Suddenly from oat the darkness sounded a woman's voice, pore and clear as a bell, singing an old world simple ballad. The pronunciation might have jarred on an educated ear, bat the melody was there, sweet and perfect, untrammelled by affectation or professional tricks. Half the doors in the street were quickly opened, and as many tousled female heads popped ont. Someone was singing ! No one ever sung down there No one ever laughed. They had forgotten how te laugh or sing. In the grim struggle with hard sordid life there was no lime for laughter. They forgot love, forgot God, forgot everything save that they were fighting a hand-to-hand struggle with poverty. And here was someone actually singing! They gaped at each other breathlessly. Who could it be, they wondered 7 A little way down the street, a door stood ajar, letting a flood of lamplight fall across the pavement. It must be Jim Seddoo's wife, they told themselves His new wife. She most be from the country, they thought; no town woman ever sang like that. The melody, as it floated away on the wings of the storm, touched their hearts, and they crept inside their homes again,to crouch by the dying embers with tear-dimmed eyes. Then, sadly, they wondered, would she always sing t has. Night after night, the world stood still for them, while the woman sang her melodies, the rich luscious notes filling their hearts with a wistful longing for some thing—they scarce knew whit. Then when the baby came the song grew quieter, sadder, and more touching. Old cradle songs and half-forgetten harmonies, that held the grim little street in ecstasy. Sadder still they grew until at last the melodies were choked half-way with sobs. The women shook their heads sadly, they knew how it would end. They had never thought before how brutal man could be. There was murder in their hearts, bat they were only women, alas. In the singer's home the woman sat before the dying fire, rooking her tnbe gently, and fating with dry, aching eyes into the flickering flame, as it danced over the coils. So this was the end of it all. The end of all the bright dreams, the fairy palaces of hopes, the end of an ideal. Her hero's feet were of clay, and it seemed to her that the ghosts of her dead dreams gathered round her, like misty shapes, to mock and gibber. A sudden resolve entered her head. If there was any shame left in him she would save him yet. The air was keen and frosty, but she harried along quickly, holding her little child safely to her breast. Outside the tavern she stood hesitatingly. Tha flaring gas-lamps seemed to laugh at her misery. The clink of glasses and the sound of revelry within stifled her heart. No, she thought, there shall be no seene! I will not bring shame upon him before ethers. He will not be long, I will wait and whisper quietly—perhaps it will do more good. She leaned against the wood work, and tried not to think, bat, somehow, the green fields and the scent of the hay would come back. The calm, pure life of the old, sweet days came back from the dead, and a tear trickled slowly down her cheek. The illusion was over; there was nothing but bitter reality to face. Nothing bat a sickening sense of defeat and failure. A drunken passer-by lounged against her, wtking her up from her reverie. The came a longing lo sing once more. Just one more old song, and then—silence for ever. What matter if the crowd did stare and wonder at her. She tried to start but the notes would not come, she tried again, and again, bat still no sound, save a stifled moan. Her voice was gone! As the grim tiuth dawned slowly upon lit r, her head fell heavily forward, aod she would , have fallen, had she not clutched the woodwork tightly. She staggered round to the side street, and sat upon a step, wearily. There was nothing left now. Not eve a a note of the old songs. Would he oever come! Still she sat there, while the shouts and singing waxed loader than ever inside the flaunting gin palace. They found her aod her little burden, at midnight—cold and still. The women of that dingy street think sometimes of the " singing woman," and sometimes* her songs come back to them in dreams. 11. The street was long and narrow, grimy and unkempt. All day the stifling smoke swept down with fierce malignity npoo the rows of dreary, patched up houses. All day the rash and rattle of factory wheels mingled with the noise of the traffic in the great city a hundred yards away. Outside a dusty, ugly window hung a tiny cage, scarce big enough to give a canary freedom, and a thrush's wistful eyes looked out between the bars upon the motley crowd beneath He was the victim of some devilish,civilised scheme engendered by the march of progress; torn from t**e smiling fields and woods to beat his wings for ever agaiost a townsman § prison. He saw the pale, weary faces pass beneath his cage, heard the sobs of starring children, watched the many miniature tragedies enacted in this corner of life's stage, snd yet. when a stray sunbeam glinted the windows opposite, his little heart throbbed with joy and his gladsome song rose over the misery and sin, away through the smoke and fog till it reached the blue vault of God's heaven. Sometimes a stranger, mors human than the rest, would stop to listen, and then ;o onward with a suspicious moisture in his eyes and an echo from the past ringing in his heart. Tortured there amid the heart-throbs of a great city, where men fight and trample each ot hi r in the dust, while the golden sunshine lights up in vain the fragrant meadow and the amber corn, still hope fought against despair, and no morning dawned without bis dulcet tones announcing its advent. He was only a singing-bird, fed, when at all, on scraps; his little head always in contact with the cold hard wood of the prison, but when the timid twilight stole shyly across the street, as if afraid to dispute ownership with the overhanging stench and dost, he conjured up a thousand tender memories of the old sweet life.a thousand tender thoughts of spring. He saw the delicious whiteness of blossoms in wood and orchard, watched the yellow gorse soft nestling on the hillside as if to hide from the bold nodding bluebells, and when a poor lost butterfly winged its way helplessly down the street, all the old passionate longing for freedom, air and sunshine surged within him, and throughoat his song one might have traced a sobbing cadence, now rising, now falling like the moao of a great, never silent ocean. No matter if the weither was stormy; hail or rain, his cheery notes went forth to do battle with the elemenis, went forth lo put new life and hope into the hearts of Hose

whose last spark of human feeling remained unquenched. Perchance Home tired worker, longing for the night, caught a stray note or two and wondered if God was still alive and if there was really anything beyond the cold stars when all was over. He was but a tiny songster—a few inches of flesh and feather, bat with more sterling courage in his little heart than a thousand of your white-faced cravens who flinch at the first touch of grim cam and retreat before the first blow of the battle has been struck. They will not suffer in silence, will not be content to stand and see the brave dreams falling like snowflakes before the wind, nor brace their muscles for one last forlorn straggle, and die, if need be, " unwept, unhonoured and unsung." He had lost an empire greater than they had ever seen even in dreams, lost brighter hopes than they could conceive, and withal he sang and trilled as if across the gloomy vista of chimney-pots came the plaintive chime of some convent bell, setting ths world atnne with melody. The shadows fell and lengthened, and it seemed as if the old days were back again. lie stood by the dear, quiet river, watching the pale, shimmering moonlight flit across the bird-haunted lawn, all the trees standing ont in delicate tracery of leaf and branch against the silver-light. Then the stars came and peeped down on the sleeping world; he thought of them as lamps on the streets of the land of dreams. In the distance, where the city lay, the lights came and went, yellow, brown and red, flickering on the ripples of the tired river, and his heart grew sad for a moment, and then he poured forth a light hearted carol, and serenade to the meadows and trees of God's country. Sang to the weary ones, hushing them to rest, cheering the tired travellers on the dusty wav, soothing the aching hearthunger and tilling the drowsy flowers with sweet content. He is singing still in this grimy alley just as he sang to his mate in the green-roofed wood a year ago. Each day he heralds with a p»an of joy; each night-breeze carries on its wings his tender lullaby; and when his last 'goodnight ' is sung, I know one heart that will be the sadder for his loss. 111. He sighed as he trudged along the narrow, dusty lane, hot with the fading gleams of the summer sun. The long, fretful day was nearly over now, he thought wearily, as he sank down rn a gre i mound by the roadside, arv 1 dropped h head on his hands. Ovc • ~«"d, in the t -*, a thrush was Bending down flights of melody, but heseemsduot to hear. The rich, luscious notes floated away on the breeze unheeded. His heart was too full of a sickening sense of misery to careought for externals; life was worse than empty, jarred out of all peace and beauty. His eyes had a wistful stare in them as he sat there and the tears welled often, making the vision a blurred landscape. There were no glories for him in the brilliant, golden patches of gorse, high up there on the hills; no beauty in the sprinkled whiteness of blossom in wood and orchard; the shimmer of the bluebells as they nodded in the sunshine, the tender simple daisies peeping like stars from a sky of green, passed unheeded. A tiny stream close at hand babbled melodious music on its pebbly way, but it wearied him. It seemed to sing of fame, success, love —words he had forgotten. There are so many songs for victorious conquerors, so few for those who know nothing but the story of continual failure, whose lips form ever the " Hie .' "<'

over so many buried dreams. It seemed io him—mad, braised, and stunned with bis misery, that God must be dead or asleep. Was this the world of God's creation ? This world whose motto "qui perd peche," mocks its Maker? Faith was waverior in him; it is difficult to believe when over one's shoulder comes the hoarse laugh of Despair, as it sits and gibbers in the dusk. He had no friends. Who makes friends with weary dusty failures ? His clothes were threadbare, he had not tasted food for nearly two days, and now hie Btrenglh was ebbing fast and he longed for the end. Oh, Death, if the selfimposed entrance through thy gates were but honourable, hew many souls wonld crowd along the narrow pathway ? His pride revolted at the idea of begging his bread, and sooner than enter one of those great institutions where one lives like an automaton, he wonld have died of sheer hunger, for obstinacy was born in him. No. there was notblng left save Death. Home, friends, money were ail gone. Ht knew all he had lost,—is there a greater misery ? He had crept away from the town, away from the grinding clash of wheels, away from the smoke and filth to the glorious, open expanse of country, where all the city's squalid dreariness, the gloomy strife of creeds is left far behind. Away from the tumult and terrible unrest, life's vexed questions are forgotten. What matter the whence or whither? Genius itself can bat offer a poor counterfeit of the delicious splendour of the twilight on fie grren of holds and woods, when the blue wist< shadows steal over all, and oat in the weht, where tho sun has faded, shines the sky city, with its crimson shores still bright and radiant. Dream faces rise from out the fragrant dusk to welcome us and kiss away the memory of sordid life. But half its sweetness was lost upon him. There is always a milestone where one must say "good-bye"—good-bye, very often, to all the better part of one's self—and he had taken his farewells of peace and love far back on life's lane. All he longed for now was silence. What a passion comes over us sometimes for quietude aud rest ; the multifarious cadences of human life, grand though they may be, seem to jar on the strained nerves so terribly. All the overwhelming sense of his sorrow gathered round Lis being, like mist upon a dead man's face ; the grinning skeletons of dead hopes rose from their tombs to gloat over this last scene of all. His stoicism gave way at last, and the hot blinding tears trickled through his bony fingers and mingled with the dust. Poor, starved heart, crushed back on itself. Is there no one who saxes ? Suddenly, round the bend of the lane there came a little child ; so suddenly that it seemed as if heaven itself had opened and sent forth a messenger. A little blue eyed girl, with sunlit hair that fell in golden, lustrous carls about her shoulders ; in her hand a bunch of roses, gathered evidently, by their rare delicate linta, frem a rich man's garden. A child's heart is very sensitive to tears, and Beeing the dejected, sobbing figure on the grass, she trotted up to him and asked in her innocent baby tongue: " What's 'oo cwying for, mister man ?"—a world of pity in her look. No answer ; he did not hear the question " Poor mister man, don't cwy ! Would 'oo like a pitty fower ?" she prattled on, stroking his face gently with her baby hand. " It's ray birthday to-day and the ' pit(y lady ' gave me all these bootiful woses; - ' this with a jerk of her liny thumb towards the mansion, whose castellated chimneys were just visible through the trees. He felt the touch and looked up, just as she laid one of the roses on his knee.

He took it mechanically between his Rogers and stared in wonder and amazement at the quaint little figure before him. Who was this pretty fairy who went about bewitching men's heait with her roses and those irresistible, baby ways? He could not think. God was not dead then after all. He tried to speak, but a lump rose in his throat, and the words would not come. Bending over the little maid, his eyes still wet with tears, ho managed to stammer out a few words of thanks, and, lightly touching her cheek with his hot trembling lips, stood watching her as she scampered off home with a wondrous tale of adventure. His heart had heard her voice, heard it and was troubled te its depths at the new life of power and strength that was stimng within it. Then there was her flower—it was so long since he had received a kind word, much less a rose. How like the old old days came the scent of the simple blossoms. A vision of a quaint old-fashioned rose garden and a slight girlish figure rose before his eyes, blotting out the trees and sky. Holding the creamy petals to his lips with a passionate tenderness, he went on, down the lane, a new light shining in his eyes, a new hope fluttering at his heart. IV. There they were, on the big table under the nursery window, drawn up in six long glittering lines, a goodly army of toy soldiers! Men of all ranks were reperesented therecaptains, colonels, generals, privates, and "non-coms." Here, the sunlight glinted on a fine regiment of cavalry iu an impossible, Burne-Jones-like uniform of. red and blue ; there, on a company standing at. "attention" in an attitude that said very little that was commendable for the resident drill-instructor. But, all the same, their little mistress was very fond of them, and they of her, far even leaden soldiers can be reciprocal in the matter of affection. She sat before them now, a little goldenhaired tiguie with a serious face, arranging her cosmopolitan army into something like mathematical squares and inspecting all the battalions with the eyes of three commanding officers. Private Jones wanted a new helmet but. as the commissariat department had no helmets left, he had to go without. Corporal Smith was severely reprimanded for turning out on parade with a rusty bayonet showing above bis rifle muzzle, but a penknife will do wonders, and a few strokes of the sharp blade brought the leaden bayonet up smiling like " best Sheffield." These toy heroes were her only friends, and indeed they seemed to her, in her loneliness, to be half human. She tried to remember when it was that her mother died, but it seemed so long ago that she scarcely could think even of her face, and the tall, handsome man she called " Father " came but seldom into her province. The acrid old housekeeper would immediately bmish her to the exterior leneliness of the outer hall did she dare to ask questions that were awkward about her parent, and so Bhe grew to confide in the soldiers all the perplexities of her small brain, and on winter evenings she would sit in the firelight surrounded by a select band of leaden gentlemen, and the sour-minded housekeeper would be brought up for courtmartial and tried for high treason. For one bo young she was abnormally fond of reading and, Btrange to say, she developed a fondness for all appertaining to military matters. Stories of battles won across the seas were her daily pabulum, and she knew more of contemporary military history than most • ..if tliree times her age. Times without

number had the famous "thin rei line" been drawn up on that old nursery table, and punitive expeditions against recalcitrant dusky monarchs were of every day occurrence There were many bright uniforms and many heroes in the ranks of that, small army —warriors who rode on mettlesome chargers and who " took off " if it was necessary to have a few dead men on the field for conventionality's sake—but her especial favourite was a private whom she had raised te the dignity of Commander-in-Chief. The Bavarian workman who was responsible for his existence had in a tit of generosity, painted a broad sash of gold ribbon across the front of his tunic, and hence, in his new pDEiiion. he did not seem incongruous. On festive occasions such as the " Heights of Alma : ' or the " Queen's Birthday," a water-colour box was called into use to renovate that golden sash, the width of which depended en the importance of the occasion. She had once overheard a story of one Mulvaney, and, somehow, the name had remained fast in her memory, bo she christened her Commander-in-Chief, Mulvaney. He, in his turn, thought the world of his Sovereign, and when the shadows grew longer on the velvet grass and the stars peeped down, thro' the cloud-b;irs, at their brothers the street-lamps, when his golden haired queen tumbled off to sleep among the pillows, he would rouse the soldiers from their card-board boxes. A quick ear might have heard (he tramp, tramp, tramp, of tiny feet as they took up their positions round the bivouac fires, and when he called the toast of the evening, " Gentlemen, the Queen !" their cheers rang round the rafters of the old nursery. It was a queer little Bohemian Army, bat each to the others wis " bon camarade " which, after all, is not so Btrange. He was her friend, her conhdant, and all the little troubles and perplexing questions were poured into his ears during the long hours of the summer twilight when she called together her councillors. At night, sometimes, he would pace up and down the long table in the moonlight " on sentry-go for the Queen " as he called it, and wonder if that cough wis as tiresome as ever. When tho guard turned out to relieve him he would stand, looking through the window-pane at the thin curtain of mist rising from the ■% alley in the early morning light, and if strange, sweet dreams came to him he would courtmartial himself at once. One'day, when she came to the last of the peonies her father had given her on his latest visit, she suddenly decided to be thrifty. Mulvaney was of course consulted and, having discussed the pros and cons of the question, he was placed on guard over the coin propped up on the skirting-board at the far end of the room, with instructions not to relinquish his post on any account. Each morning, aud indeed many times during the day. she would visit liim and in quire if the treasure was secure, to which he always responded "yes, your Majesty,'' wheeling round to "attention '" with bis beßt salute. Personal matters were then talked over, and many dainties were brought for his delectation. But there came one morning when she did not appear; night fell and she had not brcn; morning dawned attain, and still . she was absent. Mulvaney grew anxious—and hungry. In another room the little queen lay lighting the latt great right greater than all the Inkermans in the world. A combination of pulmonary diseatcs had brought her low, but all the time during the many long nights of delirium her cry was for " Mul " —always " Mul." No one knew to what she referred, and the ' crisis came and pissed. The hired nurse J saw that death was slowly but sorely gaining

the victory. She grew calmer—an ominous lull in the storm—but when the morning broke, flushed and radiant, they knew sh? would ueverseethe end of the day. When the evening shadows fell across the white coverlet, she had gone home. Mulvaney waited and waited, but she never came again, and he wondered what was the matter, what had happened. Perhaps she had forgotten all about him. a new toy had arrived, and he was too old to be of any use. All these and a thousand other theories rose iu his mind, but he could think of nothing that savoured of certainty. He was determined to stand to his post as a soldier should, until relieved, and so he waited there, tired and hungry, for many long, dreary days until, at last, his poor little leaden nature gave way, and he fell forward, dragging the coin with him. Through a crack in the boards they went, soldier and penny, and were lost in the darkness. Many years afterwards, when the hoose was being rebuilt, a gray-haired workman—- " Gentleman Jim." as his mates called hi in —found, deep buried in the dust and dirt, a rusty leaden soldier and a mouldy penny. He held them in his hands for a few moments, and then, strangely enough, the landscape grew blurred and indistinct.