PATCHWORK PIECES

Otago Witness, Issue 3885, 28 August 1928, Page 76

PATCHWORK PIECES

By

Eileen Service.

l-011 the Otago Witness.) LXV.—MELODRAMA. The rare beauty of Riria may have been true. I have heard them speak of it as they speak of a legend, loving the sound and detail of their story, but half disbelieving the very words they say. I have seen them become silent, their- faces rapt with memories. But later, they have shaken their heads and gone from the hall. She came of a wild line. After her father died, the people shunned his castle , on the shore, for rumour had settled like a mist around it; suggesting baleful things. There had been a day years before-when Red Hector, the wind beating his utterances back about his head, had stood alone cursing the sea. Not that the sea had ever hurt him or his, nor yet that he had cause for his mouthings. But the devil entered his heart that day, and turned him against t the goddess he had loved. There had been ill-luck-in the house ever since, and he and his sons had met with violent deaths. Riria grew up unknown. That is to say, men forgot that her father had had a daughter, and remembering ' only the young wife who had died at Riria’s birth, did not think to question the nurse who, after periodic visits to the township, would return to the castle with her basket heavy with fare. But by and by there came tales of a sprite that flitted about the shore, and of a figure sometimes seen in the tower, looking towards the sea. “ Tis the nurse’s brat,” they said, “ or else it is.a ghost.” But reason belied both statements, so that they brought to mind the babe that ( had been left when Red Hector’s son had come to his death by drowning, and recalled that she had been named “ Riria.” Their curiosity was roused. But it was long before anyone perceived the girl closely, for the old menace still seemed to come, from the castle, and men preferred the high road to the path along tlie shore. Then. Dirk the poet, who had been, tramping the coast for solitude, told of what he had seen—someone with a shape like a water-maiden’s running over the sand. The wind had. blown her hair out before her and hidden her face behind its length. But he had known at once that it was beautiful, even as her hair was beautiful. When a seagull had come from the sky, she had paused, her arm lifted, till it flew down to her hand. Then, with the bird held to her heart, she had gone up the path of the castle, and Dirk had known that it was Riria he had seen. Next time the nurse came to the township she was surrounded by an eager crowd. Had she Red Hector’s granddaughter living in the castle with her? Then why had she kept her so aloof? The old woman blanched, but refused to utter a word. Nothing could move her. She was stubborn as a stone. Then Garla, Dirk’s sister, appeared,’ and coaxed so prettily that she felt her suspicions melt within her, and asked the girl why she wished to know. “ Only for the sake of friendship,” Garla replied. “We would like her to come and join us if she is all alone. Can we not know about her?” She looked very sincere standing there, - black curls glinting in the sun. “Is it really for friendship?” the old woman -asked. . Yes, indeed,” Garla said. “ Indeed it is.” " Then you will understand, and ask no more,” said the nurse. “She lives alone because she cannot do otherwise Riria is mad.” Garla told Dirk that evening. She spoke in a whisper, fear in her voice, and described the hopeless gesture of the nurse when the fatal truth had been pronounced. She 13 he the last of her line,” she said, “ and let no others inherit her tainted blood. The curse Red Hector earned must die with. her. There is no other' way.’” ’ The matter dropped. The people, their horror of the castle renewed, refrained from speaking of it, and though they ueie gentle to the crone when she came to buy, none of them questioned her again.

But Dirk could not rest. He felt that if. he could but look on the face of the girl he had seen that day he would be filled with a power to awaken all fi>e poetry within him. His songs would be immortal could he but see her once, tor he felt in her a strange source of inspiration. - Hence, one morning, haunted by his thoughts, he went in secret to the shore, and there by the water’s edge lie saw her. She was bending above the gull in her hands, and stroking its white bosom. Her hair was like a ruddy cloak. Her feet and arms were bare. All at once she raised her head. Then he saw her for what she was, .pale, fine, enchanting, with a beauty that made him marvel. Her .mouth was like coral, warm and curving. Her eyes were like green waves. • As Dirk stared, she lowered her gaze and saw him, and with a wild cry , tied along the beach. ■ When Dirk caught her she was ready to fault with terror. All her brightness had vanished, and she seemed shrunken and old. -“Dear,” he.said, “dear,” and strove to take her hand*. But she pulled away

“ Leave me, for your own sake,” she prayed.

He gazed at her, amazed at the magic of her appeal. Wlio was it spread that tale about her? In her eyes was nothing but fear. “The crone libelled you,” he said at last. “ What she said was false. Riria, daughter of Red Hector’s son, why did she say you were mad ? ” At this, strangely, the panic left the girl. The wrists Dirk held grew firm within his grasp, and the pale face flushed with colour. “ Oh, precious words! ” she breathed. “.Who are you that come and say them to me? I will tell you what you ask.” It was true that she was not mad. But her nurse, who was something of a witch, had seen that she was under a spell compelling her to be the last of Red Hector’s line; and because they knew that any man who-loved her must perish, they had planned the tale of her madness to keep her alone. “ Then why did you grow so happv when I said you were only afraid?” Dirk questioned. . “ Because—ah—because you could see the truth,” came her reply. Then fear came upon her again. “Go from me,” she begged. The story of what followed makes music as it falls from the lips of those who tell it. Dirk would not leave her. Instead, fired with the love which comes to a man only once in a lifetime, he stood by her there on the sea shore, and wooed her with his words. He spoke of release for her—was not a passion such as theirs clean enough and sane enough to defy an old, dead curse? She must go away from the castle into the friendship of the town where the priest would marry them. As for her nurse, she could follow later. But now it would be fatal to return to claim her. Riria, who all her days had dreamed of this moment believing that for her it could happen -only in Paradise, paled and flushed by turns. The heart in her breast was like the gull in her arms —free, light, ecstatic. That she had ever been frightened by prophecy! The sunlight bathed them in silver radiance, and the sea was almost soundless, as it-rolled up the shore. At last they turned their backs on the castle, and hand in hand set off towards the town. It is at this point that the storytellers grow museful. Visions of green eyes rise before them wistfully, and they speak of them with such eloquence that beauty haunts the room. But their reverie is short-lived. They must come to the end of the talc which sounds on a note of tragedv. Dirk did not bring her to the town, for Fate intervened upon the way. An unknown quicksand played them traitor, ahd they perished before the eyes of the nurse who followed them too late. So did the spell come true, and Riria, last of her line, with the man who loved her, went into the keeping of the sea which had decreed it.