THE LAND OF REGRETS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2004, 21 July 1892, Page 38

THE LAND OF REGRETS.

By Hugh Buet. A tussock-yellowy knoll, bright in the early afternoon sunshine, offered such irresistible attractions as a site to waste the long sweet hours of the afcernoon, that a breathless scramble and a profuse radiation of physical heat seemed but a small expenditure compared with the recompense, and the summit was quickly gained. A clump of olive gums, flecked with the snow of summer blossoms, crowned the knoll. At my feet, in the meadow below, waves of ripe wheat, swept by a. soft breeze, broke in a crisp whisper at the hill's base. In the distance the sea, torn by some foreign gale, reflected the blue sky. Now and then a huge breaker crashed into a cloud of white foam and hung for a moment in the blue void before it seethed away into a dappled lacework of froth. Lying flat upon my back I gazod away into the illimitable azure arch overhead. A few nebulous wind clouds were scudding across the &ky — the white foam of the ocean, drawn up by the strong sun to descend again in cooling showers. Once, I seemed to catch a glimpse of the dog Btar through the rich depths of colour, but the illusion faded. Presently I began to be conscious of that peculiar feeling which some people at times experience in lailway travelling. The clouds above appeared to be standing sii 1, and I could feel the earth swinging round. And so, cradled oa Nature's bosom, I sank away into that dolce far niente — that swett doing nothing, which is the height of. luxurious selfindulgence. The distant boom of the ocean, the rustle of a rabbit among the tussocks, and th 2 cracking of t; c black seed pods of a neigbbuuncg bush of broom as they opened to the &ud, alone brcke the silence. Suddenly that queer, indefinable feeling of not being alone ru c hed over me, and I started hastily to a sitting posture. Not a soul was to be seen. One tremulous rtac'a ot the distant river rushing to the seashoie, silverplated by the summer sun, and, lower down, the ripple on the shallows (lashed in the sunlight like a shoal of frightened fishes*. As I glanced round a second time 1 experienced a feeling as if meeting somebody's eyes in a mirror, and then the voice of my old friend the ghost greeted hip. It was tlie first time I bad ever had a visit from him by da? light, and I looked curiou-ly around to discover his whereabouts, but in vain. " Where are jou? " I asked at last, somewhat iiritably, it muss be confessed. . " Hero." " Where's here ? " " Just in front of you." I looked in froiit of me with a unless penetrating stare. " I can't see you," I protested. "Naturally,, 1 he answered, "seeing I am iv visible." " iaut can't you come to sight ? " I queried.

"No," was the mournful answer, "not even to you'by daylight." 11 At least," I suggested, after a moment's meditation, " take up some position where I shall know how you are located. Ido distinctly object to be surrounded by somebody I can'c see. Sit on that rock," indicating a slab of stone cropping out from the hillside. " Are you there ? " I continued a trifle suspiciously. " Yes," lie answered, and a knowledge of bis position certainly assisted me in locating his voice. " Well, now," I said, sharply " what the deuce do you want ?" " Don't say that," be remonstrated. " Say what ? " "Why, that place, you know." "What are you drivelling about?" I exclaimed. " Well, you said ' the deuce,' " he replied doggedly, " and I don't like these impertinent insinuations." The knowledge that perhaps I had been unwittingly touching a tender place made me more careful, and my next question waß more moderately framed : " Whatever has induced you to come out by day, though 1 " " There, you said it again," he complained. " I did nothing of the sort," I answered, angrily, " I said ' induced.' " " I was lonely," he cut in quickly, deprecating, doubtless, my display of irritation. " and I was haunted." "Haunted?" 1 queried. "A ghost haunted. What by, pray ? " "The ghosts of missed opportunities and wasted chances which haunt the land of regrets," he answered, sadly. " You know, as Whittier says, ' Of all sad words of tongue or pen the saddest are these : "It might have been." ' " " What do you know of Whittier ? ' I asked. "He lived long after your time." " Oh, but I have met his ghost since he died. He's always quoting his own poetry, and thinks all his geese are swans. These obscure poets are all alike. Why, only this morning I left Bacon carting round a memorial for signature with a view to getting public recognition of his claim to have writcen Shakespeare's plays, and of ooorse Will will be in the iiy!d at once with a counter memorial." '• But what," I said, returning to his original statement, " do you mean by being haunted by the ghosts of lost opportunists Have you missed something especiaUy good ? " " No," he answered, " I don't know that I have missed chances that other people would not also have missed. But surely you yourself must have occasional reminiscences oE golden opportunities that you have allowed to slide." " I don't know that I have," I answered. Anyway I have no persistent recollection of any, except an occasional chance of a flirtation that my laziness ha 3 barred me from accepting." " You cannot call that a lost opportunity," he interpolated with piou3 orthodoxy. " Flirts are simply the fraudulent moneylenders of love-land. They get all the interest they can on their capital, and run no risk, because their principal is base." " Flirtation," I interrupted with dignity, " is the lubricant of the wheels of society, and without it what is otherwise a palatable and joyous ami' gement of civilisation becomes wearisome and insipid." " No, no," he interrupted. " You are wrong, and so is the practice jou advooate." "You've grown beastly prudish all of a sudden," I said irritably, "I don't believe your my ghost at all. You might as well say that ugliness is a ciime." 11 So it is," he answered, suavely, " in many people's creed ; but that does not matter, because it is always a question of opinion as to whether a person is ugly or not. Every pretty girl believes herself positively handsome, and the ugliest will admit nothing beyond plainness. Very ofterj, too, you'll find, in the case of women, that, like apples, the worst looking are the sweetest. But surely you have had other chances which you have missed — mistakes you have made. Have you never put the last trump on your partner's long suit and have been unable to give him back the lead ? Have you never had to choose between Yes and No, between action anl inaction? I remember so well how I have failed to do the right thing. I once took a woman's ' No ' to mean ' No,' and allowed her to show me down a long passage to the door. I remember that she paused at the door and fumbled long with the latch. I ought to have kissed ber then — I didn't. Where is she now ? Twenty thousand miles away — dead and buried perhaps, old and grey-haired auy way. If I had only embraced the opportunity and her at the same time, bow different things might have been. One of the saddest things in the world is the recollectior, as our friend the blacksmith in ' Great Expectations ' says, that ' You cannot bend the past from its eternal shape 1 ' " I had been employing myself during his soliloquy by throwing pebbles at the rock in front of me, and as he stopped short I suddenly realised that I had been throwing them through him. Conscious that even a ghosjgt feelings might be hurt by cne throwing stones through him, I hastily took up the theme to cover my confusion. " It's not a bit of use repining and moaning over what's done. Thi past is pa^t — '4jet the dead pa«t bury it< pust ' say T. Our lives, cur hope?, and our ambitions a'l lie in the future, and although I grant that experience in the past is an aimirable school, and that ' men may rise on stepping siones of their dead selves to Viigh---r things,' il doesn't do to brood too much on the lfs-oi^s learrit. 'Act — act iv the living present 'is the motto I should take.' 1 So ergro3?ed was I in my pretty little serraon that I had quite forgotten that, it waa hardly applicable to my ghostly auditor until he broke in : "Ah, yep, foi you. But we poor spirits are haunted by our past, for we have eternity for our future, and the mind fails to gratp the infinity of those coons of ages, and so the lesser past, with its circumscribed limits, becomes dear to us. And yet we long at times, like the Blessed Damoz^l, to steal back to earth to those who loved us, and to live awhile in those old scenes where our

brief race was run, where we lived and loved and lost, for we know that the world is very fair." The thin amber radiance of the summer twilight, through which the silver stars struggled to the surface, was deepening into the velvet blue of night. A whisper sped across the night air, nearer than the distant surging of the sea. It might have been a sudden wind in the gums, but to my listening soul it Beemed the responsive murmur of Goa's voice to the cry that fell from his lip 3 : The world is very fair.