GOLDEN FLOWER

Otago Witness, Issue 3885, 28 August 1928, Page 8

GOLDEN FLOWER

A NEW ZEALAND STORY.

By

DULCE CARMAN.

(Copyright. For the Otago Witness.)

CHAPTER XVII.—SMOKE WREATHS. Because of your strong faith, I kept the track Whose sharp-set stones my strength had well-nigh spent. I could not meet your eyes if I turned back— So on I went! —Aldis Dunbar. Rosemary stood petrified with fear in the little enclosure by the Wonder Tree, and strove to realise just how it was possible that a world that had been a thing of placid beauty only one short hour ago should have turned into a raging inferno in so short a time. She had never been in the vicinity of a big bush fire, and did not know the almost unbelievable rapidity with which it can sweep over a sun-dried countryside. She had never known what it was to go in to tea, with all the world a place of sunsteeped calm and beauty, and to come out, barely an hour afterwards, to a howling hurricane of a gale and raging fires up to the garden fence. It would have seemed impossible to her, had she been told of it, though only too many New Zealand women could have sorrowfully testified to the truth of it. So she stood in the little clearing, while white puffs of smoke began to curl here and there amongst the trees, and the roar of the fire intensified. She could hear it crackling now, and here and there along the bush aisles she saw dry tufts of bracken catch alight and flare up into gorgeous flame. It came into her mind that here—while she stood rooted to the ground with the deadly horror of fire that always rendered her helpless—she had four lives to save—Bride’s, her own little daughter’s, and the two little stranger children who 'were her guests. Dawn—her one adored possession! Could she give way to the panic that was overwhelming her reason, and leave them all to certain destruction ? It was unthinkable. If only the Hawk had been at home. He would have known just what to do —men were always so resourceful—and Brian had always been so wonderful at seeing ways out of a scrape. Brian! It struck her with the force of a great discovery, th'at she had not thought of him as Brian for many and many a long day. He had not seemed to be clearly himself to her eyes, but oddly mixed up with somebody else. It was all a part of the dreams that made her life so different, from that of everybody else. Then, through the curious coppery glow old Bride came hastening, with the children by her side. “ You sent the children for me, dearie? ” she said, and her keen eyes saw just how the paralysing fear was gripping her nursling’s will. “ Yes, Bride,” Rosemary spoke tonelessly, like someone speaking in thensleep. “We found a fairly Wonder Tree, you see, and there is a little velvet box on it addressed to you. Of course, you must take it off yourself, or the fairy spell will be broken.” “For me!” echoed Bride absently, while her eyes turned from the little leaping flames in the distance to the Wonder Tree close at hand. “ There would jot be anything there for me! ” “ But there is—see ? That little box! ”

Bride reached .up, and her trembling 'fingers unfastened the small jeweller’s box, and opened it slowly. On a bed of white velvet lay a brooch—an Irish four-leaved shamrock—wrought in finest New Zealand greenstone. Tears stood for a moment in the keen frosty blue eyes that read the message on the label. “Heaven bless him!” Bride murmured, “ And give him his heart’s desire! ” “Bride!” Rosemary said calmly. “ There are bush fires all round us.”' “ Yes, dearie ” —uneasily—“ I am afraid there are.” “ We had better strip everything from the tree and lay them indoors,” Rosemary continued with the some unnatural calm. “If we close all the windows and doors the house may perhaps escape. But that we cannot wait to see.” “ But, dearie,” ventured the old woman, uncertain how best to deal with this totally new and unexpected aspect of her charge, “ what else can. we do but wait? The fires are all raging along the way Mr Damarel goes out, and I know of no other way out of the clearing. We are trapped here.” Rosemary wrung her slender hands together and moaned a little, and the frightened children crept close, up to her. Then, with a supreme effort, she roused herself and spoke with authority. “ We must strip the tree.” She stepped towards the little fir, and began stripping the gifts from its branches with hasty fingers. “ The fairies will understand,” she said with a strange little smile. “ Here, Sunshine, dear, gather all these up in your dress and run over to the house and put them in the dining room for me, will you, girlie? All the tickets are on them, so we can share them out By and bye, but just now there is no . time. . When they are all off the tree and safely on the dining room table, we will shut the house up, and you and Denis ? sjliall take us back by the way you came. We will wait in the open • country, .until the. fire is past.”

The thick, white smoke was sweeping ’Chokingly down the long aisles of

trees now, the children’s smarting eyes were full of stinging tears, but those which filled old Bride’s blue eyes came not from the smoke, but from the fullness of her heart as she realised that this was a different Rosemary from the one who had dreamed away the years in the little valley of enchantment. “ Oh, God, bring us out safely! ” she prayed with unbounded faith. “ Let this fire be the means of bringing it all back to my dearie. End his martyrdom, dear God, and give him his heart’s desire.”

Everything was off the little tree at last, and Sunshine sped away, followed more slowly by the others, and at last all was made as secure as possible, and they prepared to leave Arcadia to its fate. ’

All through the bush the fire was raging now. Dead limbs blazed up, turned into a mass of glowing crimson embers in an incredibly short space of time, and crashed earthwards, showering myriad embers and sparks broadcast in their fall, and starting innumerable other little crawling flames. It was almost impossible to see or speak for the heavy, choking denseness of the rolling smoke-wreaths. The smoke cloud in the sky by this time was visible for many miles. “We must go by the way you and Denis came, dear,” Rosemary said gently to Sunshine, who was very white, but bravely strove to hide her terror from the two smaller ones who did not fully comprehend their danger. “ Will you show us? ” Sunshine nodded dumbly. “It’s an awful long way. We’ll‘have to go all through the fires,” said Denis, looking frightened. “ We'd better go now.”

So they all went to the narrow passage of the vine curtain, and squeezed through one by one, and stood before the high log wall. The fires were up to the wall on one side of the gully, little forerunners of the leaping crimson flames behind. Here and there the big wall itself was blazing. “We have got to climb oyer this,” Sunshine said doubtfully, looking from Rosemary to Bride. “ There isn’t any ether way that I know of; and look at the fires sweeping down the side of the gully’ Oh, do be quick! ” “ I will go over first,” Rosemary decided swiftly; “and you help the children up, Bride. I will take them down the other side, and give vou a helping hand.” So resolutely crushing down the panic that tempted her to scream and rush madly away in search of coolness and safety Rosemary climbed the high log wall. Then Sunshine scrambled nimbly up after her, and dragged up Dawn, whom Bride lifted as high as possible, and lowered her safety into her mother’s arms, and then came Denis.

“ I’m going back now,” Sunshine called down amidst the choking smoke. “ I can get up so easily. I will help Bride up, and then come up after her.” She nodded cheerfully, and slid down off the wall into the choking mists of the gully. It seemed an eternity to the waiting Rosemary before Bride’s white hair appeared over the top of the wall, but presently she stood safely beside her mistress, and all but Sunshine had escaped from the death-trap of the fern gully. Take the children straight away, Bride!” commanded Rosemary. “Denis will show you the way, and the fires do not seem quite so thick over there. Every minute that we waste adds to the danger. Don’t be frightened for me. We shall be quite all right. As soon as Sunshine is over the wall we will follow you. It won’t be more than a minute.”

“We came this way,” Denis said eagerly, catching at Bride’s hand. “Come on, I know the way! ” So, with Denis leading and Dawn clinging closely to her hand, Bride moved away, and was instantly hidden from view by the swirling smoke wreaths. Rosemary watched them disappear, and then turned back to where Sunshine’s brown head poked up above the top of the wall. “I’ll be over in a minute!” the child cried reassuringly. “ You don’t need to wait for me if you would rather go on with the others. I know my way quite well.”

“1 wouldn’t dream 'of leaving here without you!” Rosemary declared positively, and felt surprised herself at the new strength and decision in her tones. Sunshine gave a convulsive wriggle, and reached out one thin little brown hand to get a new grip. Rosemary, with a sick sense of being absolutely useless, saw her firmly grasp a burning branch and fall back out of sight with a wild scream of pain as the agonising WUng shot up her arm. For just a moment, standing there in the swirling smoke of the fern gully, Rosemary fought the battle of her life. Nobody would ever know just how hard it had been to crush out the panic feeling that was born of some forgotten happening whi<?h had taken place in that part of her life which was but a shadowy mystery. She was very near breaking-’ point when she stood by the log’wall, waiting for Sunshine to slide down

beside her and begin the difficult journey that still lay between them and safety. And now Sunshine was not to 5c counted on. She had not reappeared on top of the log wall, and there had not been a sound after the first wild scream. Somehow little Sunshine had been hurt in her fall. And there was only Rosemary to help. It seemed to her as though she were in a nightmare—one of those heart-rending nightmares where one is faced with awful dangers, and one’s limbs refuse utterly to move in any direction. Could she possibly force herself to re-climb the wall and find out what had happened to the little strangergirl who was her guest? Her guest! Ah! —the right chord was touched at last. The claims of hospitality must ne met at all costs. Rosemary knew that somehow she must rescue Sunshine and return her as safety as might be to th? relatives who were waiting out there in the peaceful evening, where there was no smoke, no cruel, roaring flames leaping gleefully nearer every moment. For a second a wild prayer ascended and beat against the gates of heaven. “ Please god, help me to save her. Dear God, give me the courage to stav by her and bring her out to safety. Help me to find her and get her safety over the wall, dear God!” Instant by instant the fires were leaping nearer. Soon there would be no escape possible, with this rising wind fanning the cruel flames to madness. And then—God answered prayer—as He has always answered prayer since time began. Through the mists that clouded Rosemary’s memory—through the mad panic which chained her helpless, there stole a sudden thought. Somewhere there had been someone else who had suffered through fire for the sake of a young girl. Rosemary could not remember clearly who it was, nor whom the girl had been. She only felt that somehow he would know if she failed him—and that to fail him was unthinkable. What he had done she could do. So Rosemary reclimbed the wall!

The space between the log wall and the hanging curtain of vines that led to Arcadia was filled with a woolly cloud of suffocating smoke. Rosemary’s eyes streamed with painful tears as she groped her way along at the foot of the wall, and presently stumbled over the child for whom she was seeking. Sunshine lay in a little crumpled up heap where she had fallen. Her head was still resting on the gnarled root which had stunned her, and her brave brown eyes were closed. Out of the smoke, as Rosemary stooped to gather the thin little form up into her arms, a small snake of flame came licking, crawling along the dry grass till it was dreadfully close to the small brown hand that was so cruelty burnt already. It was the one thing necessary to dispel the last fragment of Rosemary’s fear. Those who knew her best, going over the track that she had taken, when the fire had burnt itself out and ruined the loveliest patch of native bush for many miles, looked at the weight of the log wall, the difficulties of the steep-sided gully, and wondered how so slight a girl as Rosemary could possibly have managed to complete the journey in safety with the tremendous handicap of the unconscious child that she carried in her arms.

It seemed to the girl herself that she stumbled on for hours, and once an ember from a blazing tree dropped into the waving mass of Sunshine’s hair, and a thick tress blazed up, and had to be crushed out with hasty hand; and once Rosemary’s own thin summer dress caught fire and flared wildly as the girl tore it fiercely from her, gathered up the unconscious little figure again and staggered on once more. She stumbled out at last into the blessed open spaces where the fire had not yet reached. Here there was calm; the roar and rush of the fire was still some distance away; all around was peace and eool evening shadows. For a moment Rosemary stood up very straight and slim in her little silk Princess petticoat. “Oh, thank you, God! ” she said with heartfelt gratitude. “ Dear God, I have done my best. Let them find her soon. Let them come before the fire reaches us, please, dear God.” She laid Sunshine down very gently on a mossy slope and gave one long, shuddering look round before she sank down beside the child in a pitiful little heap from which all torturing thoughts slipped mercifully away for a space. And that was how they found them, tying side by side, with Rosemary’s arm thrown protectingly across the child who had done for her what nobody else had been able to do, the child whose need for succour had pierced the mists which had darkened her rescuer’s life.

They stood and looked down at the unconscious figures for a moment —Jim Dene, and half a dozen men from the township whom he had hastily summoned as soon as old Bride had arrived at Gerard’s with the two children, and told the broken story of how her mistress and Sunshine were to have followed her, but in some strange way had failed to do so. And with them came the Hawk, racing home on the big untamed black thoroughbred, as soon as he heard that the precious patch of bush was on fire. “ There seems to have been an accident!” Jim said. “Unless the smoke overcame the two of them—but then, they could never have got away out here if it had been that.”

“ Ah, look at the kiddie’s hand—that’s as iiasty a burn as I want to ■see!” one of the men interrupted. “And look at the bump on her head. She has

been hurt somehow. The young lady must have carried her here.”

He looked curiously at Rosemary, lying so still in her silk petticoat. “ We must take them home,” said the Hawk curtly, looking across at Jim. Then he turned and gave a long glance at the burning bush. “Man—you couldn’t!” Jim interrupted, reading the other’s thoughts. “You would never get there. She wouldn’t live through it —there may not even be a house left by this time. Come back to Gerard’s with me. Flower will never forgive you if you don’t.” The grey eyes and the black ones looked deep into each other, and then the Hawk said slowly—- “ Yes! I will bring her there.” Jim stooped and lifted his little sister into his arms, and Brian took off hits eoat and wrapped it carefully roun4 Rosemary’s shoulders before he raised her from the ground, and turned tq follow Jim across the uneven mossy paddock.

“ Would one of you he good enough to lead my horse back for me ? ” he asked, but steadfastly refused all offers of help with the burden in his arms.

And so they came to the end of their journey, and Flower and Ailsa. meeting them at the door, cried out in horror at sight of the two still faces. “Bring her in here!” Flower said quickly, opening the door of her own room as Brian approached, his face very stern and set. “ Oh, poor girl, what in the world has happened to her ? ” “We do not know yet,” the man ’answered very gently; “but I think she has only fainted from fatigue and fright.’ Sunshine has been hurt somehow, and Rosemary seems to have been carrying her. As you see, she has no dress on, but she started with one, I am sure.”

He laid the unconscious girl gently down on the bed, and for a moment his black head was very close to the niggerbrown waves on the pillow. “ The only person in the world he cares for more than he does for Dawn,” Flower reminded herself with a fierce pain at her heart. “ Well, she is very lovely, and she must be very brave.” Aloud she only said, “ I will get some water. We must try to bring her round,” and went hastily out of the room.

Brian remained standing by the side of the bed', staring moodily down at the white face on the pillow’, and all at once the brown eyes trembled open, and Rose-, mary smiled wanly at the down-bent handsome face.

“ Oh, boy of the world! ” she murmured weakly, “ I saw your eyes all the time. I am so thankful that God did not let me disgrace you.” She spoke no more, but seemed to drift away into unconsciousness again, and when Flower came back into the room she wondered just what had happened to so completely change the expression of the young man’s face. But he did nc,t enlighten her as to the cause of the change; only thanked her very briefly for all that she was doing and preparing to do, and suggested that Bride should be summoned to care for her nursling. “ Bride understands her best,” he said. “ Rosemary would like best to find Bride with her when she —wakes up. I will stay’ till she is all right, and then I will go and see if Fate has left us a home or not.” “ But you would never be able to get through,” objected Flower with wide eyes of surprise. “ The wind has gone down, but Jim says the whole bush is alight from one end to the other. You would never manage to get there—and what could you do if you did ? ” The Hawk gave a little reckless laugh. “ Very little, lam afraid. Nothing, probably, except satisfy my own curiosity. But I should get through all right, Golden Flower. Don’t you know that it is only 7 those whom the gods love who die young They turned their faces from me some years ago.” The girl flushed uncomfortably at some strange quality in the tense look he gave her, some vibration in his musical voice. “ I will call Bride,” she murmured hastily, and left the room on her errand, while the Hawk turned once again to the still form on the bed. (To be continued.)