SHADOWS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2130, 20 December 1894, Page 6

SHADOWS.

(Specially Written for the Witness Christina* Kumler of 1594 )

By PAQUITA.

The world does perhaps carry a sombre guggestion in its sound ; and yet, mayhap, like the graßß that grows greenest under the broad 6hadow of the oak boughs, the shadowed places in our lives are the fairest 1 This is, however, but a passing reflection, borne of the desire to dispel at starting the Idea that we are going to contemplate ■badows in contradistinction to joys. No, it is rather the artist's shadows and the memories that attach to them, the endless recollections of colour, warmth, and brilhlstory of many a life, the slow purification liance of shadows, mist, and silence. The of many a nature which ended In perfect nobility, was writ, my friend, in shadows —only to-day we will paint pictures, not moralise 1 Here are the broad shadows of fullfoliaged, heavily-laden fruit trees, blocked in dense blackness on the parched earth beneath ; brilliance of an autumn sky above, light and heat radiating alike from plains and mountains, until the very atmosphere ghimmers and pulsates with its Intensity. From head to foot the poplar trees stand clothed in gold, and when a yellow leaf floats Slowly down it eddies, aimless, through the motionless calm; oDly the thistledown floats gaily past. From whence ? To whither 1 Over the sundried grass a dark shadow skims swiftly, and is gone ; a bird has flown past —bis liquid note pierces the slumberous air. Here are shadows of great white clouds on a summer's day. Now they are borne over the fields of oats and barley, while the Pght windeways the feathered grain in mimic waves. How slowly they pasp, these cloud shadows, as though they were climbing over the great mountains, deepening as they go the blue and the purple, blotting oat the sunlit slopes.

Here are 6hadows in the moonlight, where ill is unreal and idealised, where ugly and commonplace surroundirga gain new and mysterious semblances. An' you are in the city, then does the moonlight transmute what is sordid and commonplace into delicate and picturesque silhouettes. An* you are in the country, the picturesque la glorified into the ideal and mysterious. Here, again, in the picture gallery of memory, are a host of shadows. Some of them have perhaps little intrinsic beauty, but we linger over their every fantasy, because with them Is Incorporated the very atmosphere of some day of supreme joy or intense thankfulness, whereto all the fair world about us was sympathetic.

Again tkere Is the memory of shadows, themselves delicate and exquisite, whose very beauty was but a mockery; an affront by heedless Nature, who could thus be gay and debonnaire when we were sad. Such a day when, to soothe our bitter grief, all the world should have been grey ; and instead, " Earth goeth unto earth," in the splendour of sunshine, with the dainty shadows of the leaves flickering a delicate shadow dat.ee across the dusty road, along which we watch that black procession crawling so slowly. And again, the wind blows free, the cloud shadows chase each other up from the ocean horizon, over the sand dunes, away to the upland pastures — and we 1 Out to the heart with the downfall of hope and ambition, •named by one we loved, betrayed by one we trusted, how hateful alike the brilliant sunshine and the fleeting shadows, how utterly out of harmony with our own desolation is this beauty of Nature ( Again, there will arise memories of some trivial, inconsequent shadow that was taken note of by the mere mechanical observation which busies itself in taking notes when the mind itself is benumbed by some great Crisis.

Such a memory recalls a Sunday morning service in late spring. So tortured and yet so numb was the aching mind that not one word of all the service, not a face amid all the congregation, can memory recall ; and yet one trivial circumstance remains, never to be effaced. A bird had built her nest in the Ivy that clung round the buttress of the great east window. To and fro she flitted, busy with her nestlings; and the tiny shadow that silently crossed the crimson and amberstained glass is the only memory that remains of that sad day.

And yet again, cannot we all recall some fleeting shadow which was a voiceless answer, a formless comforter, on one dark hour?

Such a thought reminds one of a morning In autnmn, dry and dusty, with an air of parched and arid dreariness. The high wind turned all the world to weary unrest ; early as it was, the little groups of workers who clattered alOßg the pavement looked worn and weary as they vainly strove to evade the freakish wind that seemed to blow from all quarters at once. One, a young girl, with a Bad, patient face, paused by the church for a second, and In the pause an eddying gHst came whirling down the steep street beside her, bringing a pungent, bitter-sweet odour of chrysanthemum!, and bearing a tiny -winged sycamore •eed, whose little shadow whirled before it here and there on the pavement, till both sank together at the girl's feet. She lifted it, and as she hurried on to her daily toil I saw her touching lovingly the gauzy wing varied with golden brown and tinged with pink. The grpc «nd perfection of the frail tbirg lying there in the sordid street— what was It but a message ? To her, she has often told me, sunk deep in sorrow and anxiety, the little sycamore seed, winged on the wings of the wind, broughc a message of courage end faith in the higher intelligence, whese loTe encompasses us even when life seems most unlovely. Shadows there are of man's creating— how different from Nature 1 * lovely shadows 1

more to grieve and torment the mother than for their own childish faults. Whispers of terrible fits of hopeless weeping, and "the mistress's" pathetic attempts to hide all traces of emotion before "master" came home. There is no doubt this must all have come from the servants— the grand inquisitors — themselves. Who else could have contrasted those hours of melancholy brooding with the gentle dignity of the wife who smiled and listened with conventional interest in her husband and his gueßts, who obediently sat at the piano to sing or to play, yet whose handsome face was like a mask, and whose hands, when their task was over, sank trembling and nerveless from the instrument ?

Servants' gossip, evidently; and theirs, too, the rumours of strange, pitiful sounds which sometimes broke the Btillness of night — sounds like the muffled voice of one in pain, yet afraid to cry out; and, later on, last of all, rumours of strange fits of absentmindedneßS and dulness, when "mistress" grieved no longer, and did not notice what went on, but seemed " dull-like and forgetful "so long as the fit lasted. And could it be that she had tried to find forgetfulnese in— drngs — or And it was no wonder if it was so. What 1 dead ? No lit cannot be 1 Yes ; dead— asleep— at rest. A cold sleep : a long rest 1 Then all the idle rumours, all the backstairs whispers, the exaggerated accusations of dismissed servants, the everyday gossip of the actual little group in service, gathered into a mighty wave of damning evidence which threatened to overwhelm the husband with a charge of murder.

The police were slow to move in those days, and there was the natural reluctance to charge a man of high social standing with so terrible a crime ; but the voices of the Inquisitors and the voices of their friends rang on, until the matter became a scandal which must be verified or stamped out.

The inquiry came on. One — two— three tedious days, spent in taking voluminous Evidence, wore to their close. The whitewashed, wooden courthouse was crowded to suffocation. The crowd oreiflowed the nax-

hangin' round the wrists— elowly dropping something from a little bottle into a glaßs ; and then again for a moment I saw the ehadow of her whole figure as ehe moved forward and hurriedly drank off whatever she bad put into the glass— and then the light went out."

An audible breath of relief ran like a sigh through the densely-packed multitude. Every soul there dwelt for a moment in pitiful Bilenco on the realisation of the life that, like the light, had " gone out "— goue out into what?

But the man's voice broke the silence once mere.

•' Sir and gentleman all, these were gome of the shadows that night, but these were not all. In a downstairs room I saw the shadow of a man — a tall, big man — with his head bent forward-like and hands crossed behind his back, cross and re-crosa the blinds as he paced up and down the room. After the light had been put out upstairs, and a bit after that again, when I turned away and walked on, the man's shadow still paced up and down the room. I looked at my watch, for I had to strike a match to light my pipe, and the time was 10 minutes to 1."

Ah, well, the evidence oE the shadows, given by a man known to be of thoroughly upright and reliable character, was conclusive. Suicide - neither more|nor less. If behind the tragedy lay a romance no less sad, it was but partly guessed at, and soon forgotten. The shadows— which only concern ns — had done their part ; let us turn to another group ere we write " finis." Look down a long sunlit vista, where a country road cuts through the very heart of a dense bu3h.

Hare the shadows are as various as beautiful. Now they flicker in airy, fantastic tracery across the white road, and again they blot out the light with their dense masses that seemed saturated with cool green, while bars of golden sunlight lie athwart and divide this from that.

Early morning it is j the softness of misty violet Bhado.vs upon the low hills to seaward, the pale dewy gold of the areat tol-

i li ii i■ i wi nK**4WUBMme . matcaaastßataisßcsaßtaa^ its wistful, dark eyes aud the waving mass of her blue-black hair.

But the moon climbs up, np ; it is far past the topmoßt spears of the great cabbage tree. The trysting time is pc6t, and still the girl lingers. Now as eho takes the homeward path, the silent moon-made shadow gliding over the grass is as clear and sharp as was that sun-fashioned shadow which glanced co bravely in the morning.

Through the stillness of: the night a sound, scarce heard in the daytime, rang clear and distinct, the murmur of the rivor fretting over its wide shingly bed. One can almost bear the variations of sound.the crescendo and diminuendo of that ceaseless music whose beauty is lost in continuity. Even while the girlish shadow passes alowly over the grass another shadow away down there by the brawling river slowly changes its outline as the moon climbs higher, and each grotesque variation of the unnatural outline serves but to add to its horror.

A long sand spit stretches far out into the current, and at the end of the spit, where the wilful current for ever raises a barrier to thwart itself, among the snags and driftwood, lies a dark figure againßt which the ripples dash unheeded.

The white face, with its brave blue eyes dimmed for ever, and the waves of ruddy hair, all dank and sand-drifted, stares np at the moon. The mighty limbs are flung in a groteeque caricature of their natural grace ; the shadow of the man mingles with the crazy shadows of the bleached driftwood.

Ah, me I what a contrast to the shadows of which he made a part in the golden morning —for that waa Life, and this, alaß I is Death.

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Betraying shadows cast by the lamplight upon drawn blinds, distorted, yet fatal in their evidence. Some unknown, entirely commonplace individual is passing or loitering about, and in an idle moment takes note of them. Next day he awakes to find himself famous — an absorbing centre of morbid curiosity ; later on perhaps the most important witness in a sensational trial for murder.

Perhaps you remember the case 1 No 1 True, it was many years ago. " Before your time," you say ?

Ah I I remember it well enough ; it ran like this :

Everyone knew that in that handsome home, with its aspect of comfort and decorous well-being, there was an unhappy family.

Reticent as individuals may be, cunningly looked and double-locked as the cupboard door may be upon the grisly skeletons within, always there are spies around us. Innocent spieß sometimes, devoid of evil intention, yet careful to miss no chance for their daily inquisition. You know them, you affect to disregard them, you are superior to the tattle of "that class of person," yet none the less you know, and I know, we are at the mercy of our servants.

At any rate, from this, or some other source, a general richneßa of information concerning the family in question enabled tout le niond to know that the master was a choleiic-tempcred tyrant, despotic, overbearing ; that the mistress — " poor, sweet mistress !"— was a Bad and disappointed woman who strove to make her children's love atone to her for the utter failure of all else in life.

Outwardly all was decorous; there was no social obligation unfulfilled, no single clause in the ritual of excellent gentility that was not complied with. Nevertheless there were whispers of children cruelly punished,

row limitß, and drifted into eager, excited groups without. All through the long, hot summer day the groups changed as the shadows shifted— loafers, Maoris, children, dogs, poultry; brilliant gleams of colour, rich masses of shadow, studies for an artist, material for the philosopher, and then oarae the climax, when the shadows of that fatal night played their part in saving a man's neck from the gallows.

It was late In the afternoon, the court was about; to adjourn, already a clear amber vision of a cool " long beer " sent a flicker of geniality over the magistrate's countenance, when a horseman, dusty and travel-stained, dashed up to the courthouse door, flung the reins of his sweat-covered horae to the nearest band, and pushed hie way up the crowded court.

A moment he paused, mopping his face with a huge scarlet bandanna, and then, before etiquette or decorum could freeze him into conventional limits, broke forth :

" Sir and gentlemen all, thank God I am not too lato I There's been no murder done here — 'tis a simple story. But, Lord, it do make my neck to crik to think how easy a man comes nigh suspicion to start and gallows to end." " My good man," broke in the magistrate's official accents in weighty remonstrance, but his voice was swept away in the full, Bonorous tones of the stranger.

" Yes, sir, 'twaß this way. I was not myself, wandering about a goodish bit, for I had a first-rate reason for being restless. The lighted windows of yon bfg house caught my fancy. I must have watched 'om without knowiu' I was watchin'. There was a big upstairs window, with white bllnde, facing me — the lights were brightest in that room, no trees or creepers to hide it. I saw the sharp, clear shadow of a woman's hands — I knew it waß a woman's by the fal-lals

toi Cats, the clear liquid shrilling o! the birds in the forest ; the morning of youth, too, for these two riders who come towards us down the long vista. Through the shadows, where they themBelves are shadowless, through the bars of golden sunlight, where the shadows of their horses bulk blaokly on the white road, cantering gaily along. The ring of the horses 1 hoofs, the rush of the soft air parted by their rapid motion, the sound of their voices, the ripple of their laughter— sweet morning time of life I fair shadows that lend a charm to sunlight 1

He as fair as the Norse hero of some old Saga, with his ruddy hair and clear blue eyes; she, dark, with great soft eyes made darker by their dark-fringed eyelashes — hand clatped in hand, their horses keeping pace, the rhythm of the ringing hoof s keeping time to the beating of loving hearts, the throbbing of young pulses. The shadows mingle ; they have no lorgpr separate individuality, as they sweep from light to shade ; the girl's head lies for a moment on the broad breast of her lover, their lips meet. Aye, these bo royal shadows, these shadows of the morning I For what can man or maid desire more ? To be young, to love, and to be beloved — no king were richer J

Bat what are these shadows 7

Where the wan moonlight floods the fields, and straDge quivering little breezes 6hiver down among the flax bushes and the to:-*x>i 1

Here by the sliprails a slender shadow falls across the dewy gras«— the shadow of a young girl, who Gornutimes stands motionless in a very crystallisation of patience, and again turns wistfully round to watoh the moon.

Then one sees how sweet a face is this, for the light, rose-coloured wrap is thrown about her for warmth, not concealment, and the moon shines full on her clear, pale face, with