Sunshine.

Otago Witness, Issue 3327, 19 December 1917, Page 62

Sunshine.

By Winufked S. Tennant.

It was Christmas time, and, being a solitary person, more by chance than any marked inclination of nature, he sought out the loneliest spot in the loneliest locality be* could find, and proceeded to spend" the festive season fishing. He •pitched his tent, laid out a humble bed of straw, stacked in a modern candle-box his collection of old writers, sorted out his supply of tinned goods and tobacco from his fishing tackle, then went down to the river to convince the wily New Zealand trout that an expert angler, even though he be bereft of one hand, is still likely to prove a fishy proposition. There ■was no sign of an encampment within light, not even a spiral of smoke against sky—only the green band of willows jtretching in ah unbroken line the lar distance, with here and there a gleam .»f the silver fiver shining through. His jolitude was complete. • At midday he returned • to his camp >nd cooked a trout fresh from the freedom of life and the river. He dined in ionely state at the entrance to the tent, with a volume of Matthew Arnold open *n his knees. " For early didst thou leave the world, with powers fresh, undiverted io the world without," he quoted as the iast morsel of fish passed his lips. Then he flung back the flap of the tent and Stretched himself on his bed of straw $o give himself up to the luxury of indolence was just landing his twenty-fifth trout when his slumbers were rudely broken by • a disturbing and unmistakable sound, a Jin man and distinctly feminine voice. " It's a swagger, 'Edwin! 'Look at the grubSy old tent and the awful clodhoppers outside it." " Rot! Those are fishing boots, and swaggers don't read Matthew Arnold. I looked in anyway. There's a returned soldier lying there snoring. He's maimed ; liis left a"m ends above the wrist. Look for yourself if you don't believe me." " I shall." " You wouldn't dare!" "See, then!" And a vision in white suddenly filled Jhe entrance to the tent, to be confronted by the figure of a man rising up from his lowly couch, with wrath and indignation in his eyes. t • "Oh!" gasped the vision, and vanished. Seth gr< ned. Life was like that, -he reflected, n * the world too small a place to live in. It was over-populated, there wasn't a spot on its expanse where s, man could find freedom from the jostling of his fellow-beings. "Edwin!'/ The name in itself was an offence. Edwin and Angelina come to disturb his hardly-gotten peace! Later he discovered that while he had slept, like a mushroom in the night, a Jormidable encampment had sprung up Hbout a hundred yards down stream. There were girls in plenty—silk-stockinged creatures; youths in flannels; a busy and harassed mamma and a stout papa with boredom and bitter rebellion in the very uttitude of him, as with savage blows he drove in the stakes of the last tent. How, thought Seth resentfully, could fcamping-out benefit worldly, comfortloving creatures such as these? The girls would annex his lately-discovered - swim" : ng pool and sit on the bank and jplas -ch other and dabble their pretty Jeet. The men would hang about the river and smoke and play cards, littering the place with cigarette-ends and bananatkins. Horrible! He considered seriously the advisability of breaking camp; but !hen, he reflected, if he discovered another ikely place others would probably penetrate his seclusion as these had done, and the process of moving would have to be faced again. The thing would be a constant nightmarei In the end he decided io remain and ignore the invaders com"pletely. It was almost dusk when Edwin sauntered over from ■ the camp to where Seth was sorting out suitable specimens from his book of flies in readiness for his evening's fishing. " Got any tinned milk, old chap?" he queried pleasantly. " Enough for mv own needs," responded Beth without looking up. Edwin was silent for a moment from the chilling rebuff in the other's voice; then he rallied. " Sofry we disturbed you this afternoon. Thought you were asleep." "• Only dozing." " My cousin was quite upset about it." " Was she?" came Seth's bored reJoinder. ■» Edwin sighed audibly. " Have a cigaritte. old chap?" "Thanks: no. I smoke a pipe." "Fish, do you?" " Yes." " Catch anything?" "Yes." "Some flv-book!" "Think so?" - Edwin retired vanquished, fully convinced that his neighbour was either a )>oor or utterly crazy. He communicated the information to the, remainder of the party, who were inclined to share his news, with the exception of one. " Why, I think he's perfectly splendid—h"ke a lion at bay. When he saw me his eyes simply popped." It was a night of stars and sileinje. To the lonely angler standing with the water swirling about his knees, casting his line far out into the stream, came ihe intermingling of river smells and the occasional sleepy twitter of some nesting bird stirring in the trees on the bank. Everything in view seemed to some purpose, some fundamental rule to follow: the stars to light the night, the river to *eek the sea, the nesting-bird" to bring forth its young. He alone was an alien tn the great of things. Should he die to-morrow no one would miss Idm . .And then a tug at his line broke

his meditations —a powerful and impatient tug, another. Then the reel spun in his hand and the line shot out down stream. Here was purpose at last in the shape of a ten-pounder. He laughed, and with exceeding good humour comn enced to play his fish. The loss of his hand had taught him many strange devices. He could fill his pipe by holding it in tho crook of his maimed'arm, darn his own socks by drawing them over the shortened member. Now the trout was brought, leaping in vain protestation, to land, with a set of strong, white tejeth winding in tho reel. In three minutes he had extricated the hook from is jaws and was about to finish the evil work when he was startled by a voice. " Oh, let the poor thing go—let it go!" He looked up. Here was the girl who had surprised him earlier in the day standing beside him now, with her hands clapped to her breast. " Let him go?" he laughed, forgetting the boorish campaign he bad planned out. "Not I. These are the days of the survival of the fittest, you know. It's his life or mine, and if- I released him I should surely die of hunger in the morning." "You wouldn't. Let him go," she pleaded. He smiled in resignation and let the trout slip through his fingers. It flopped helplessly for a moment, then wriggled over the bank and sped away into the deeper waters. " Thank you," she said simply. "Don't you mind killing things?" '• l No; I've been to the war." "When did you come back?" "Six months ago." "Tell me about it." "About what?" "Why, the war, of course." "Don't you read the papers?"' She laughed in exasperation. "Yes. 'We successfully raided the enemy trenches, bringing in a number of prisoners.' What does that mean?" "Why, just a few minutes of blood and thunder for a handful of volunteers, courting .death and finding it sometimes; a few' surprised Huns pleading 'Kamerad'; a helmet or two as souvenirs " He broke off. She waited for him to continut. "Is the old boy your father." he inquired suddenly. She laughed at the swift change of topic. "My uncle," she answered. "Where are the rest of them?" he asked. "Playing cards mostly. Edwin's stupefying motns and baetles under a tumbler with cigarette smoke. He wouldn't listen' to reason. He said it was an experiment, and that he wanted to find out which of the two species displayed the most power ,of resistance; so I stole away, only to discover you in the act of killing a trout. What's your name?" "Seth Shaddon." She looked away across the swirling water for a long moment as though plunged into profound meditation; then dimly, through the gloom, her eyes sought his. "Seth Shaddon, angler and adventurer. Is bad temper, your birthright, or are you merely lonely?" "Why?" he asked crisply. "Edwin says you're either a boor or crazy." "For. Edwin's special edification I admit to being both. You might tell him so." "I certainly won't." "I am, you know," he insisted, wondering a little why this fair creature should have penetrated so deeply through his armour of reserve. "I'm crazy with loneliness. You wouldn't understand " "Perhaps I would," she suggested seriously. , . "You? How?" he questioned. "One can be hungry in the midst of plenty. Do you think I belong in the atmosphere of that camp?" "Aren't you a pleasure-lover?" "No, not at heart. I like to probe below the surface of things." "You shouldn't'," he told her. "You might unearth discoveries. You might, for instance, dig down to the iron of ,a man's soul, or you might find the most innocent-looking being, going his -daily round, with seven devils lurking in his heart. She '"smiled absently at that. "Were you always lonely?" she asked. "There was a time," he began gruffly, and broke off y/ith a shrug. "Couldn't you tell me?" He studied her for a moment in puzzled silence. "Why," he said, "isn't the 'dead past supposed to be its own undertaker' ?" "No; 'the past never dies,' it only goes to sleep," she gave back. "Why should I tell you?" he asked, his voice husky with his need human sympathy. " "Don't, if you don't care to," she answered frankly. "I do care," he said with a sudden warmth. "You seem to understand. Loneliness was my inheritance. I was born lonely and fatherless. My mother died when I was a babe in arms. An old bachelor uncle brought me up. He used a whole tin of Keating's powder once in mistake for pepper, and didn't discover his error until he . looked at the label when about to order more of the same brand. That sort of thing seemed to characterise his whole life. He was a dreamer. I hovered on the outskirts of his existence until I'd grown old enough to know better; then I struck out for myself as 'boy' on a sheep run. When war broke out I enlisted. "I'd been several months in the trenches when it happened. A girl started writing to me. Someone in our company must have known I was a lonely individual, and sent her my address. From the day that her first letter came the whole world changed for me. She used to sign herself 'Sunshine,' and gave me a fictitious name and the all-embracing address of 'Post Office, Christchurch, New Zealand.' We wrote to each other every week, and every mail day seemed to get further into each other's hearts. I've gone into the

trenches as into a football match, because of that girl. The outcome of it all was that I fell in love with hei. You mightn't believe that. I'd never seen ber. yet to me she stood for, the personification of perfect womanhood. There was a broadness, a fineness about the girl who wrote those letters that I can't explain. "And I wrote to her and asked her if I had the luck to come through, and she found me the man she thought well, I asked her to marry me. The day after posting that letter a shell took my hand and wrist away as a souvenir. 'Sunshine' wrote to me. She began : 'My Soldier, — Your letter has reached me. I know, too. that you are hurt and the extent of your wound. The paper told me that. And, oh, my dear, ybu must know that when you come back the one desire of my heart will be to face life as your wife. Your affiiction will be but a bond to strengthen our love. And as faithfully as a primitive woman shall I tend you, care for you.' She wrote mo:e—sweet, sacred things I can't talk about. That's all. I couldn't marry her, you see, because she meant so very much to me. She herself was too priceless to be given anything with a flaw. It wouldn't have been fair to her, though now I know I would give the other hand gladly just to see her—once.

" I'm off. Bed-time, isn't it?" He gathered up his fishing tackle. "I don't know why I've been telling you all these things. You seem to invite confidence." She laughed, a strange, broken little laugh. "It's Christmas Eve," she said. "Are you going to hang up your stocking?" "No; Santa would fill it with dust and ashes."

"Pessimist!" she said. "He's probably going to cram it full of happiness instead."

And with the words she was gone, leaving him staring blankly after her. He was awakened by the warmth of a bar of sunlight across his face to the fact that it was Christmas morning. He lay for a few minutes sleepily watching the progress of a brown beetle that was creeping upside down across the roof of the tent; then stretched himself lazily and arose. His watch told him that it was six o'clock. His thoughts flew back to other Christmas mornings when, as a child, with a dumb and unquestioning faith in Santa Claus, he had pulled with trembling fingers a volume of some old master from the confines of a small stocking, and incidentally he had wondered why the hoary-headed donor of gifts had expected such an advanced taste in literature in the mind of so small a boy. "Dust and ashes," he ruminated as he dressed. He thought of _the girl who had prophesied the previous evening the probability of happiness for him instead. He laughed. She was a nice girl, with a rare and sweetly human gift of understanding, though probably a duplicate of Edwin would marry her- m the end. She was too good for .that. He forgave her everything—the; violating of his privacy, the loss of his ten-pound trout—in return for her sympathy, although just how she had effected an entrance into the locked chamber of his soul he could not rightly conceive.

With his towel over his arm and the idea of a cold, pre-breakfast plunge in his mind, he went out into the sunshine, and there his eye was arrested by the fluttering -of a closely-written scrap of paper pinned to the flap of the tent. A billet-doux from someone, he supposed, probably Edwin, inquiring if he kept a stock of hairwash or cold cream. No; it was something entirely different.

" Seth," he read, " you forgot to .finish your story. When Sunshine agreed to become your wife you answered her in this way: 'Am I cold, ungrateful that for these most manifold, high gifts I render nothing back at all? Not so.; not cold, but very poor instead. Ask God, Who knows. ' Sunshine, good-bye, and may heaven bless you for all vou've been to me.' Oh. soldier mine! last night you said you'd give your other hand gladly just to see her once. She's coming to claim it. Seth, and this time she will not be denied.—Sunshine." He stood transfixed, with the letter crushed in his hand, the miracle of understanding dawning within him. And so she found him. He looked at her, at the wonder of her face, the sweetness of her, fresh as the day it«elf, and the barriers of his resolve went down before the wealth of tenderness in her eyes. And suddenly he reached out towards her and drew her c'o=e. "Oh. Sunshine!" he whisnered. with his face half-hidden in her hair. "Sunshine! and it's Christmas morning."