THE DESERTED HOUSE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21396, 20 October 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE DESERTED HOUSE

BY HILDA KEANE

PICTURE AND PARABLE

The little red house had not changed much in the years. It stood sparkling over there in the sunlight, its tiny windows sending across the valley a message, quaint yet meaningful. " I was like .you once, brave and buoyant. Only three little rooms, and the porch at the back, where the cow pushed her head in at the open side and marvelled that people should shut themselves in from the stars and the good sea breezes. And I still have hope. Some day soon, ' they ' —those two who used to sit within when the day's work was done — soon they are coming back to me; they will make a fastening for the door which swings, in the north wind, against the basement wall; they will put a bolt on the gate down by the pine trees; they will cut away the tufts of manuka that sway, white and scented, in the home paddock. Oh! lam not without love." " Those people," said the man, standing square and straight, with tile sun shining into his eyes, " those people over there are letting the scrub take possession." " Oh! don't be so harsh! It is lovely to have the silence; those people would be running here and there with their axes and their cutting tools; they would be lighting fires; they would be calling to each other; we should not know what they said; but their voices would come, shrill and high, and tease us with unknown words. No; I like the' little house, in its solitary, proud indifference. . . ." Summer Then the searing war-years. "We cannot build a home yet." The man was slashing at the foam-white teatree; scent, which was like resin, like the incense of pines, like honey in the sun, like all the perfumes which are not cloying-sweet, streamed out into the air; stole along the ridge where the mother sat, with a child lying on her lap, asleep, and another child prodding with a stick into the hard earth to find, the end of passages like tubes, where angry insects crouched and champed. The sun was a lamp of fire, swinging up there in the sky; it defied her to search its secrets. She swung her gaze over to the little house. Was the paint faded P Or was it because one's eyes had watched the greater blaze? Or, at mid-day, were colours flattened out to seem less bright? The sleeping child awoke; found his world, this mass of body, this loose stuff of garments, this large, all-mean-ing something that was Mother. He curled his hand, shell-like, to grasp —the sky, the sun, the distant trees — and homing., to seek that face bent

above him. The other came with little cries, "welcoming him back from Sleep, that far land where none may intrude, displaying the weapon that had sought to destroy creatures that scuttled away into their srange tubes. Hands and round limbs and baby v voices! No world but this where the maternal is all!

And the man sweating as he swung his bright slashing tool! The little red house looked bleakly across the gully, winked away its sadness. "They have not come yet, but they will. Those two have died; but their son is coming to me, when the ship brings him back from wax. He will have a bride; they will want a home. I am waiting. Their children will play about my nooks; they will wander down to the stream where the raupo runs like a pink snake among the winter greens; they will fish for eel and kokopu; their laughter will ring shrill and sweet to the setting sun; and in the morning will trill with the birds." Autumn Mists

Home! And the autumn mists trailing in from the sea. Sweeping like feathered brooms from the curving bays, up the clefts about the little red house, passing round it and pouring in a white fold, dipping down into the valley, rising with the sway of a curtain, over the ridge and. away like an army of swift horses, into the spread town. In the new home on the hills, sounds of feet on wooden floors; smoke, stream-

ing blue from the chimneys, winding about the spires of the forest. Boys and girls, calling, calling, carrying a whole world within them, yet clinging to the one security. Thinking out whole destinies, yet earth-bound because of Home. Obeying, resenting, accepting, wondering; enslaved; free. The age-old dream of liberty ensnared by the protecting Home. Calling, playing, answering, and always rebelling and escaping into the mind-world. " They will not stay," sighs the little red house. "My people left me. We cannot all like the same things. Ever the young ask for something different. Your ways are for content a:ad quiet happiness. But theirs are for the battle; their own war; they ask no safety; that comes after fatigue. You must let them go. You must look proud as I look even in my poverty. The paint has really peeled away from my walls; the roof lets in the rains; the gate lies flat on the ground. The wind has swung the trembling door from its hinges. And there is scarcely any pasture left for a straying creature. But I face the sun, and my little broken window has still a twinkle to send back to him." Silence of Winter The winter hangs wet jewels on the forest; throws gusty breath about the crouching manuka; moans at night about the empty fireplace. It is quiet in the house on the hill; quiet in the little red cottage over the bay. The mother, whose being filled the home, is alone —she moves about the things that once reflected all the talk, all the unspoken thoughts, all the running of young feet, all the stamping in of him who slashed manuka till the sweat ran from his face, and ho laughed with an old jest brought from the other side of the world; all the things that may not be touched by straying fingers stand there, day by day, quiet, sad, wishing for destruction rather than this bleak perfection of rest. Over in the red cottage, the breakfast smoke rises from a chimney. A cow, whose back is white as the side or a tent, and whose head is black, invisible against the dark scrub, moves about among clumps oi gorse, yellow in the light. A straight mark becomes a man, heaping the cut tern into hillocks, recovering inch by inch the green from the gold. He has mended the door, raised the fallen gate. He has fenced, with brushwood, a square plot; but the winds arc not kind to his labour, and the soil is spent with the long struggle against thorny weed. " Wait!" calls the little house. Be brave as I was. Time gives our wish to all of us. Stay with me. My years are old, but less sad when I have company. And shout as you work. Send your strong voices across the hillside! Call to tli6 old hors'o that hangs its head, seeking food on the sparse old pasture. Call him! ThVow grain to the fowls that they may cluck! For living is a lonely business when there are none to speak to. When noise and clatter were about us, we sighed for peace; when hands clutched at the precious gods, the woman dreaded destruction. But what matters loss? Without the noise' and the elutchings, these things are vain reminders of the past. They sit, foolish, unseen, on her high shelf just doort< swinging in the wind, or gates flat on the untrodden path. Wait, 0 man, with me, lest I bo again left with my dreams as she is now,"