THE NOVELIST

Otago Witness, Issue 3957, 14 January 1930, Page 70

THE NOVELIST

THE NECKLACE OF EL-HOYA.

By

DULCE CARMAN.

CHAPTER XIV.—THE DREAM DIARY.

Jle takes the sound of the Singing Wind, And the noise of streams. And he weaves them cunningly in and out With the water-gleams. JThen he folds his work and puts it away In his Wallet of Dreams. —Beatrice Wentworth. “And now how about another swim? ” asked Lionel Vellacott lazily, when the gratified Cynthia had packed the fragments of the dainty lunch which had called forth unstinted praises from everybody. • “Once round the Lion rock, and then home—first lady in to get a prize of a special box of chocolates I brought down for the purpose—first man to become the proud possessor of a tin of cigarettes.”

“But, our digestions!” objected Sybil Moore, coquettishly. “It isn’t an hour after food yet, and the doctors always say ”

“Oh! They say such lots of things that you never need to take notice of half! Marie objected brightly. “I haven’t got a digestion myself, have you? Not one that ever reminds me of its existence, anyway. Does yours? It is only old people who are meant to take notice of all these things. I will lead the way—” she threw off the encircling cloak that covered her bathing dress, and ran lightly down over the Stretch of golden sand. “Wait a bit, Marie!” Lionel called after her. “We are all coming. Start fair!”

“Hurry then,” she called back over her shoulder, laughing as the little waves curled about her bare feet.

But they did not all go down to the Bea to meet her. The two smaller children still played with Cynthia, turning out a marvellous array of shell and seaweed decorated sand-pies, and Ralph Moore and Myra Leigh sat together on the beach at some little distance from them.

“ Those two have taken quite a fancy to each other!” said Terry, grinning, as he waved his hand back to the pair Underneath the big beach umbrella, before he slipped into the waves. “ Queer, isn’t it, Mona? I saw it coming the moment they first met yesterday. Didn’t you? It seemed to be in the'verv air. If you noticed, I gave them a bit of a lead in my fairy-tale.” “I did notice that!” Mona agreed. I wondered why. I didn’t see anything specially odd about them myself.” “Oh, no—not odd! Merely that they seemed to ‘ belong ’ in some’ queer way ’ to fit in together as new acquaintances Seldom do.”

“Here! Stop talking, vou two!” Lionel commanded. “We wi'll send the ladies first—or shall we all "o together ? ”

“Oh, together, I think!” Mona answered cheerfully, while the two Misses Moore, protesting, with many a that they could never swim so far—sat down where the big waves could just wash over them.

In a minute more, the beach was empty of all human beings save Cynthia and the two babies—and the two who were sitting beneath the big beach Umbrella.

“This is a great place!” Ralph Moore Baid, drawing in his breath with a sigh of satisfaction. “I suppose you come down here pretty often?” “No!” said Myra Leigh dreamily, her eyes fixed on the distant bobbing’ spots of scarlet and emerald that were the bathing caps worn by the twins. “We come down very seldom really, when you consider that it is, after ’all, not so very far from home. You see, Mr Maitland and Mr Vellacott are usually far too busy to play in the daytime, and it is too far for us to come without the car. Mona doesn’t drive it, you know. Then it would mean two trips to brim' us all down in their little car—you see there are thirteen of us altogether—oh! what an unlucky number—s didn’t realise it before, did you?”

“No! But I’m not a bit superstitious about that sort of thing!” Ralph answered easily. “Lump Dickie and Laurian in together, and call them one. She is the sweetest mite, that girlie of yours—l wish mine was more like her.” Myra laughed.

Probably she was—when she was Laurian s age. Yon must remember that one is a girl at the most difficult age, and one nothing but a baby yet.” “ I suppose that does make a little difference!” doubtfully. “ All the difference in the world. I can see Phyllis growing into a very sweet woman, if she is handled right.'” Her mother had a charming nature ” the young man broke off with a little embarrassed laugh. “ Here I am talking away to you as if I had known you all my life, and yet we met for the first time yesterday. How do you account for it? ’ It’s odd, you know,

(Special for the Otago Witness.)

u t I feel as though I had known you Hu.mutely lor years. And yet, I have never known a Myra in 'my life—l could swear to that.” I wasn’t called Myra at home!” said Mrs Leigh, in a very low voice. Look. Mr Moore—l am going to treat you like the very old friend you say jou feel yourself to be, and give yon a little diary to read. It is one that I kept erratically from a child. If it means anything to you at all, it may explain lots of things we have never understood. If it doesn’t—well! It is just the record of my strangest happening. Only—l want you to°remember that you are the first person in the world whose eye has ever seen these pages —barring my own, of course!” “It is very good of you!” began Ralph vaguely, wondering'at the wild feeling of excited suspense that overwhelmed him. “I feel very highly honoured.” *

Myra Leigh drew a gaily worked knitting bag towards her. and' extracted fast of all a half-knitted rainbowtmted silk dress for Laurian, and secondly a small green leather-covered book, gilt-edged, which she placed in the young man’s hand.

This book was given to me by mv ]P2.V ler ' s^le sa * d - with a shadowy smile. Ihe same mother who afterwards mari ied me to Ronald Leigh, because she loved him as the son she had never had, because he loved me dearly, and because he was dying. I valued this book immensely. It has always been my dearest possession—I want you to quite understand all this before you open it. I will do some knitting, so that you may read in peace. The'swimmers have nearly reached the rock, and the diary is not very Ion".” Her slender fingers busied themselves with the long white needles, and web of gleaming silk, and Ralph slowly opened the cover of the little green book she handed him. ‘The Dream Diary.’

These were the first words in the little green covered book, and they had been carefully ornamented with dainty scroll-work by the same deft fingers that had penned the words in careful childish roundhand. ‘To my Dream-Boy.’

Ralphs heart gave a strange jealous leap at the sight of the little possessive pronoun which, written by the hand of a comparative stranger, should surely have had no effect upon him at all. He marvelled a little at his own curious feelings, as he turned over the titlepage, and read the first entry that i \"> a h' 1 Wlitten tller ‘b in the same childish hand.

“This is my thirteenth birthday—and last night was the third time that I came to you. Not in the bush -lade that you were in at the first—where vou cooked the tiny crayfish, and waited upon me like a real knight—not where you gave me my tea—not even where you gathered ripe plums for me that second time I came, by a tumbledown hut in a natural clearing round which tlie forgotten orchard grew—a hut that you called by some strange native name that 1 cannot remember, but I am certain 1S c n °?. !ln -V’stralian word. ' . Xeit . hor did 1 come from my dear little pink nest of a room, where in spite of all the moths and strange night-creatures, they always used to let a riight-liglit burn in the dream-hours. It is my birthday, and I am at I. whom you christened vour Day-Dream Lady.’ I never forget what you called me. though you told me your own name once, and I cannot recall it. except that I am sure it begins with the letter * R.’

“This little book was one of mother’s presents to me. It came by the morninpost today. All the girls envy me dreadfully. I anl going to keep it altogether for you. and our doings toge her I shall only write in it on my birthdays, and then it will last for ages because it is such a small book leaI ea , and 1 should soon use it up if t dldn t make some rule like that.’ “Not even my new friend Lili Weston, who is just like a sister to mo, shall ever know of its existence. I am only a girl, but I can keep a secret, So I start to write of the night when, from school I came to you at school. I don't know how- I knew you were at school too, but I did, and of course we went to the bush-glade—there was nowhere else to go But, for the very first time we went together.

“ It was wonderful going through the bush—we saw ever so many lovely things that we had never seen before. I wonder if you will remember the fairy waterfall amongst the maidenhair, and all the other wonders of the river and the bush? I don’t suppose you will—boys are not made like that!”

The writing ended abruptly, half-way down the page, but resumed over-leaf.

“Fourteen years old to-day! I have seen you four times this year, my DreamBoy, but never once in our dear little bush glade. Why are we never able to reach there now, I wonder? We always start out with the intention of going there, of course, and we work anil struggle, and climb, and the branches of the trees bend down to stop us, and the vines tear our hands so cruelly. How yours bled the last time that we went. I woke up crying—here in the dark at school.

“ We will go somewhere else next time, and not- risk such trials, for I hate blood! My journeys with you will soon become our worst dreams—worse to me that the cliff-track breaking—worse to you than falling off a bridge! ”

Again the writing ended midway down the page, and Ralph paused, with an odd contraction of his heart, before he turned the leaf, “ Worse to you than falling off a bridge! ” That had been his own childish nightmare—even now at times it returned to plague him—to waken him with bounding pulse—bathed in the clammy perspiration of dire fear. There was something mysterious about this little green book. The young man turned the page and went on reading. , “Oh! To think that 1 am 15 years of age, ami that you are older still. How absurd it seems on the face of things, when one thinks of our most ridiculous performances of last night.

“ 1 am still at school —the same old Gippsland school—but you are away at college now, I know. And it is by the way in which reality mingles with fiction, that I feel sure that somewhere—not here in hot, every-day Australia, of course—but far away in some lovely, romantic corner of the world, you are a reality; really, truly an existing person, and, of course, waiting for me to come to you in the waking world. You see how conceited I am growing. But there are lots of things which puzzle me!

“ Why, for instance, should we have imagined that turning the handle of that wringer would unfold all the width of bush, the stretch of red road, and all the old familiar things? But it did! Would they have come if I had turned the handle, or was it a natural result of the skilful way in which you worked? For you did manage cleverly, though you looked rather surprised when the bowlful of hot, soapy water that 1 spilt spread and widened until it became the darling river that we had journeyed so far to find.

“ It was only natural, after that, that we should step into the empty bowl—but what made it turn into the beautiful white-sailed boat that took us on that glorious voyage down the river? Do you remember all the lovely things we saw? And, at last —-oh, the surprise to come to our dear, long-lost bush glade. “Oh, my Dream-Boy, my Dream-Boy! Are you real? What country in the world is it that hides you from my waking eves? ”

On the next page, was pasted a small unmounted photograph of Myra, herself. Ralph’s eyes dwelt long on the beauties of the pictured face before he read the words that were written underneath. “ This is me —Meri—your own little Day-Dream Lady herself, at 1G years of age. Seven times have we met during this last year, seven times, and on four of them we have succeeded in finding that leafy haunt that we love so well. But the last time—it worries me even now! What great temptation stood between us—striving so hard to keep us apart that we were nearly beaten? In the end I triumphed, and you were left in peace, but what would have happened if 1 had not been there to help? Would you have fallen, and to what? Can it be that now we are children no longer, you and I will lose all touch with each other?

“ I could not hear to lose you altogether, and wouldn’t you miss me just a tiny bit? Would you have no regret at all for the loss of vour Day-Dream Lady?”

The next page had only a paragraph written in the middle of' it.

“Seventeen! Out of school, and into society! I don't feel sure that 1 really like the change. My dear Lili is gone to her New Zealand home. She will write to me, of course, but it will never be the same again. I am back once more in my darling little pink room—the table whore the nightlight used to burn is covered with photos, and notes, and dance favours, and all sorts of things that come in a girl’s first season. Yet, may I confess my weakness? Old as I am, there is still a space reserved for the nightlight—and every night 1 leave one burning, in the hope'that old associations will take me through the night hours to you. “ But—and this is a very big * but ’ indeed—why do you never come to me now? I may wear finer clothes, and go to dances and races, instead of wasting all my time with French and Latin and decimal sums—but the sleep hours are yours, as they have always been. At heart I am just the same little girl whom you used to call your ‘ Day-Dream Lady.’ ”

The entry that followed was shorter still.

“Eighteen years old to-day! Lili is engaged to be married, in far-away New Zealand. How happy she must be. She wrote and asked me to be her bridesmaid just as we had always promised and planned, but father wiil not hear of me going so far away from home. I think it is the biggest disappointment that I have ever had. Oh, you who never come to me now, why do you stand between me and all that a girl holds dearest? I do not believe I shall ever have a lover, because of the strange affinity that exists between you and. me.

“ What is Lili’s home like, I wonder—her people are wealthy, I know. Who is this Donald Brooke who is her lover, and is he as nice as she says he is? I do so long to go over and see. Oh, my Dream-Boy, you are almost a stranger to me now. I think of you continually during the day, because you never come to me any more, and at night I try to find you in my dreams. Where do you hide yourself away from me? Don’t forget that it is your own little ‘ Day-Dream Lady ’ who is searching for you.” The page that followed contained the longest entry of all. “I am nineteen, and you, my little Dream-Boy of the years that have gone, are a man! Nine whole months have passed since the last time I came to you, and you came to me last night!

“ I dreamed that I was married—to you! But I could not see your face. I never have seen it properly—l do not know who you are, or what you are like to look at —I do not suppose I shall ever know. You are taller than I, and you are dark, while I am fair. So much 1 know, but that is all. “ I asked you what church we were in, and you said ’ The Moon-Mountain Church, of course! ’ in a tone of extreme surprise. That was how I knew that you were my Dream-Boy—by your voice. You were just going to kiss me, when someone came between us at the altar, and forced me away from your side. I just heard your voice through the distance, saying—•

“ ‘ Don't forget that you are mine—that you have sworn to be mine. You always belonged to me —don't forget! ’ “Then you were gone, and oh! gone for the last time. Could they not have left you just a second longer—only the fraction of a moment out of all eternity’ ?

“ I shall never come to you again during the dream-hours—you will never come to me —this is Ihe last entry I shall e\er make in my dream-diary, and I shall never open the little green book again—l could- not bear to. This part of my life that has been so much to me, though nobody else would ever have believed in it if I told them, must end here and now for ever.

“ For I am going to be married, Dream-Boy, and not in the Moon-Moun-tain Church this time, and not to you. That is why I must never think of, or come to, or write about you again, because the man I am going to marry is dean, and straight, and fine, and’deserves the whole allegiance of the woman he makes his wife.

“ Lili is married in New Zealand. She writes to me regularly, and says that she is very happy. I wonder if I shall be happy too? I hope so, but anyway you must never know—never think of me again, my Dream-Boy! You must vanish out of my life as you came into it long years ago, when you called me first to your side in the night hours, knowing little, and caring less for the seas that stretched so pitilessly wide between ; called me to your side in the drought-time, and christened me vour little Day-Dream Lady! ”

The last entry in the dream-diary ended there, and Ralph caught his breath in a heavy sigh of complete amazement as he closed the little thin green book, and clasped it tightly in his hands. (To be continued.)