THE DEVIL’S ROSE BOWL.

Otago Witness, Issue 3870, 15 May 1928, Page 81

THE DEVIL’S ROSE BOWL.

By

Dulce Carman.

(Copyright.—For the Otago Witness.) They found it by accident, one day, the two children wandering amongst the underscrub miles from all the varied wonders of the “ Land of Boiling Water.” It was Jean who first noticed the mysterious " plop, plop ” like a gigantic porridge pot simmering on a mammoth stove.

“ That’s a Rotorua sound,” she said, with wide blue eyes of wonder, “ but we’re miles away from anything of that sort. It can’t really be anything, but we’ll go and see.” Terry followed her without question — he usually did follow Jean’s lead without demur, and they came suddenly round a bend of the almost impassable'track upon the source of the mysterious sounds they had heard. Almost at their feet it lay—a pool of boiling mud, which threw up puffs and bubbles like simmering porridge. Strangest thing of all, the mud that was thrown up was curved and wreathed, and fell back upon the surface of the pool in weird and beautiful flower shapes. The earth shook slightly beneath their feet, and at times a rumbling sound came from the very bowels of the earth. “ It’s lovely, but it’s evil. I’m frightened of it,” Jean said with a shudder. “ The mud is just like satin flowers — look at the shine on them—they might be made of chocolate or coffee icing,” said the boy. “ It’s lovely, all right, but it seems to brood —it’s like part of the devil’s garden—this must be his rose bowl! ” “ The mud-blossoms really are like icing roses! ” Jean said interestedly. Don’t go too near, Terry. Think how awful it would be if the bank gave way—they often do. I don’t like the way the ground shakes.” “ We can get right round the edge of it,” the boy said interestedly. “ Let’s keep it to ourselves, Jean, our own private Rotorua. It is such a tiny place, and so far off the track that I’m sure not many people know of it. Anyway they don’t bother about it, with Rotorua and the Wairakei Valley both to go to.” “ It’s ours,” said Jean. We won’t tell a soul about it, will we, Terry? I’ve a feeling that it doesn’t want to be talked about. It’s waiting for something.” “ A sacrifice,” said the boy lightly. “ I know what you mean—l can feel it too. I wonder what the sacrifice will be?” But that was a question to which the years yet to come held the only answer. * * * The wreathing mud-blossoms of the Devil’s Rose Bowl shimmered and gleamed, formed and broke, and Terry sat on a log half hidden by a clump of undergrowth, and gazed moodily into the mysterious depths. The rain fell steadily, and Terry turned up his coat collar and hunched his shoulders up about his ears. The evil brooding atmosphere of the place fitted in well with the young man’s mood, and he gathered a certain amount of comfort from his cheerless surroundings, as he reviewed the events which had led to this frame of mind. Jean was coming home. Jean, his adored lost love, who had gone away six long years ago, with her family’s proud blessing—gone away a happy bride, whose bridegroom, both wealthy and well-born, was partly Spanish, and who, with his Castilian grandmother’s fiery blood and hair-trigger temper; had inherited fiendish jealousy, and more than a taint of madness, but of this none had known at the time, and blueeyed Jean had placed her hand willingly in his, and gone away with him laughing. The laughter had soon died out of her eyes, and the happiness out of her life. Rumours came back to New Zealand of the terrible life her husband led her — of his insane jealousy, and the dreadful fits of. anger, during which he made his unfortunate wife rue the day when she was born. Then came the day when, in a drunken rage, Bruno Castelli struck his little son a violent blow across the forehead—a blow which darkened the beautiful blue, eyes for all time. Terry ground his teeth and clenched his fists vengefully as he recalled the heart-broken letter which had come home from Jean after the maiming of her only child. The rain, falling in a steady downpour, did not affect the brooding figure at all. Jean was coming home—nothing else mattered—Jean and the little blind Leonard, who had been named for her father. He did not know quite when she was coming, because she had cabled that she would have to slip away secretly, and they were just to expect her, because she had made all her plans, and was sure that, nothing could possibly go wrong with them.

She did not even say by what boat she intended to travel, and yet somehow Terry had had a feeling for days

that she was drawing very near him; and it was this feeling of expectant unrest which had drawn him down to the boiling mud pool, which had always had a strange fascination for him. - It was not quite the same as it had been six years ago, when Jean had first of all gone away and left him lonely. With the passing of the years the pool seemed to be extending its boundaries: the throbbing of the ground beneath one’s feet was more distinct, cracks here and there upon the surrounding surface warned the curious not to approach too closely. A chill wind blew along the mountain gorge, and Terry thought that he had never seen the place look so dark and evil. The clouds wreathed the sombre mountain tops in grey, chill mist; the rain-soaked rocks of the cliff cropped out in threatening, overhanging masses which seemed ready to break loose and crush the first animate object unwary enough to pass beneath them. From the heights above clay-coloured waterfalls foamed downwards with a great scattering of yellow-grey foam into the swollen, discoloured Monowai, churning itself into a fretted fury of raging waters amongst the huge boulders of the rapids. The pools of water lying here and there on the narrow road looked as though they were composed of blood and milk mixed together. The scene was altogether very wild and very grand, but very evil and oppressive. The rain settled in more heavily than ever, and Terry felt miserably that the day was a perfect indication of his life, and just before him +’ shining mudflowers formed and brokt. blossomed and vanished with tireless repetition. ■ At the other end of the gorge a small Ford car w-as tearing over the wet road, driven by a woman who crouched over the steering wheel, with set face and desperate eyes fixed upon the road ahead. At her side a small boy sat—a palefaced, delicate child, who stared straight before him, sparing never a glance for the foaming waterfalls or the churning fury of the great river down below. “ Not much further, my darling,” the woman said at last, hopefully. “ One more long stretch and then we are out of the gorge, and after that it is only a little way to grandfather’s, and there we shall be perfectly happy and safe.” “ I don’t like this place,” said the child naively. “It isn’t a good place, mummy.” “ No, pet, it is very beautiful but it isn’t good. I never saw it look as it does now, as though—oh, my God! ” She jammed on the brakes so suddenly that the child was thrown from the seat to the floor of the car as a huge mass of rock slipped down from the hillside, and the little Ford quivered into silence and stillness with her nose bent and flattened against the side of the slip. “What—was it?” whispered the child without attempting to rise. “ A big rock came down from the face of the cliff, darling. It was very lucky that I saw it just in time to put on the brakes. But there’s another car following- us through the gorge. We shall be able to get help from it.” The child waited a moment, his face strained and white, his whole attitude one of tense listening. “ Don’t wait for the car,” he implored, clasping his small hands piteously together. “ Hide me away, mummy. Hide me somewhere —he’s coming.”

Jean gave one keen inquiring glance back towards the oncoming car. but she did not ston to question. She cast her eyes up at the side of the cliff, and realised that, with the hand’cap of the child’s helpless figure, she could just make the bush track which led through thj heavy forest to the Devil’s Rose Bowl. Seizing the child closelv in her arms she turned towards the cliff and stumblingly began the perilous ascent. To the best of her knowledge, the man whom the child dreaded was many miles overseas. She had seen and heard nothing to indicate that he had discovered the direction of her flight and followed her. But she had long ago learned that she could always trust implicitly to the uncannily acute perception of the blind child,, whom she had r er known to be wrong when he declared that his father was near him. ' So she did not hesitate now, buttackled the dangerous climb as speedily as might be, and disappeared into the dripping, cheerless bush before the second car reached the spot where the little, bent Ford was nosing into the slip. ’ “There’s a funny feel in the a‘r” whispered the child. “Can’t you feel it? And what is that sort of noise like a big porridge pot boiling a long wav away ? 6 J “ It’s a boiling mud pool, dearest. I would give half my life if you could see all these wonderful things. The boiling mud forms lovely flowers. We used to call it the Devil’s Rose Bowl, because.it seemed to be an evil place.” “ It doesn’t seem bad to me,” said the child simply. “It seems to b& just asking us to- go to it. Are we going there, mummy ? ” ; ‘JYes, dear.. There’s a track coming through the bush that leads to grand-

father’s. It will be very wet, but it’s much the quickest way.” “ The other car has stopped,” said the child. “He is still coining. Can’t you feel him getting nearer ? He can travel much quicker than you, because he hasn’t got me.”

“He shall never get you,” declared the woman passionately, “he may come quicker, but he doesn’t know the bush as ' I do. Hold me very tightly, Len, and bury your face in my shoulder. I will try to keep the branches from hurting you, but if anything touches you, you will know what it is, so do not lift your head. The Rose Bowl is not very far away now.” . She plunged determinedly through the aisles of drenched trees that showered i,cy drops upon her and the burden in her arms. Behind her she could hear the snapping of twigs and the swishing of ’ displaced branches as the man who was following gained slowly upon his prey. Jean’s knees trembled with weakness, and her breath came in sobbing gasps, but still she struggled onward, and the child in her arms lay very still. Tflie man, who was hot on their trail, fell over a root, and cursed eloquently in Spanish, and the child quivered violently, while with one supreme effort Jean broke through the last screen of bushes, and stood almost on the edge of the boiling mud pool, where Terry rose amazedly up to greet her. The woman gave a wild sob of relief. She did not pause to wonder how the young man happened to be on the spot so providentially, she merely accepted his presence as a blessed reality. “My husband is following me,” she said simply. “Can you hear him? He is certainly half mad, and probably drunk as ■well. He will murder his son if he gets him—-he is insanely jealous of him. and always strikes at me through the child.”

“He shall never get him! ” the young man assured her comfortingly. “He is quite safe, Jean. Set him down here behind these bushes, and we will see this thing through without him.” Jean did as she was bid without a murmur, and stepped out alone into the little glade, just as her husband broke through the bushes, and came to a halt, panting with his exertions. Terry, watching from the fringe of the bushes—himself unnoticed—marvelled at the tremendous change six years had wrought in the man whom he had last seen, slim and handsome and debonnaire, on his wedding day. “So I find you at last,” Castelli said in tones of deadly meaning. “ And a pretty dance you have led me, too, beloved wife. Where is our son? I long to behold him.”

Terry noticed that Jean’s eyes were fixed upon her husband’s black ones in an unblinking stare, and that she seemed to be under the same strange spell as a snake casts over a bird. “ Where is he ? ” repeated the man in tones of rising passion. “ Where is the brat for whose sake you willingly forsake your husband and make him a laughing-stock amongst his friends?” “He is safe! ” said Jean desperately. “ Safe? ” with a bitter sneer. “ Whatharm threatens him? He cannot be far away. Ah! See! ” his ex’ ’on changed to one so fierce and w hat Terry realised Jean had but spokv.x the truth when she said that her husband .was half insane. “ The hope and pride of the Castellis stands before you! ” Jean, who had been standin" with her back towards the mud pool, now swung round, and gave a wild cry of horror, as she sank to the ground swooning.

Terry also faced about, and his heart gave a great sick throb. FTightened by the sound of his dreaded father’s voice, and sensing that his mother was gone from his side, the blind child had felt his way cautiously out into the open, and now stood on the very verge of the Devil’s Rose Bowl, on the cracked ground at the edge, where nobody was ever brave enough to tread. Neither of the men paid the slightest attention to the woman’s figure Iving motionless on the sodden ground. Both of them began simultaneously, but with widely-diverging intentions, to run towards the little unconscious figure, who had halted to listen to the strange sounds around him, while almost at his feet the shining, steaming mud-flowers wreathed and blossomed and broke. Bruno Castelli was nearest to the little tense figure, and for a moment Terry’s heart failed him then he raised his voice in a wild appeal. “ Leu. Come back! Mummy wants you this minute! ” The madman laughed, and reached for the little figure just as it stepped lightly sideways, partly in answer to Terry’s call, and partly in obedience to the acute sensitiveness which warned him that his tormentor was upon him. Great beads of clammy perspiration broke out upon Terry’s brow, and he thanked God that the child was sightless, and the mother unconscious, as he saw the cracked ground on the edge of the Rose Bowl break, and the figure of Jean’s husband, struggling" unavailingly to regain his footing, finally fail forward amongst the shining “mudblossoms. To his dying day he would remember the terrible shrieks with which Bruno Castelli gave up his shadowed life, and he tried to muffle the child’s head in his coat as much as possible. He never knew quite how the time passed until the child said quaintly: •“ Hadn’t we better get mummy now ? I like this place; everything bad is gone! ”

J It was then that Terry knew what sacrifice the Devil’s Rose Bowl had been awaiting through the years.