SUNSETS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 28, 10 March 1914, Page 4

SUNSETS.

[Specially written for The Sun.]

Every day she used to sit on the sunny end of the verandah, where the sunshine, straightly down, made almost summer heat in midwinter, her thin old hands folded in her lap, the intensely wistful, patient look of the very'aged characterising her. They are so lonely, the old! they have outlived their day and generation, and they are pathetically aware of it. Children are nearer to them than anyone else; their cycles almost meet. One is at the beginning, and one at the end of life.

But I, who am neither very young nor very old—l, too, became friends with the old lady, and often my big lounging-chair occupied the sunny ver-andah-end, along with her little An - enforced, idleness, after a long illness, still held me in pleasant bondage; there is no tjoy like that of convalescing, when the world, that you thought to leave forever, is miraculously given back to you. She used to turn- her dim eyes oh me when I came out, and enquire, with her sweet, old-fashioned courtesy, after my progress. "And are you feeling better this morning, Miss Moira?"

"Oh yes, thank you, grandma" (we all called her grandma). "I'm nearly well again now. I'm growing stronger every day in this wonderful climate of yours.'' i "And when you're well you'll go away, I'm thinking," she returned. "Yes, you'll go away," she repeated, and the hands that smoothed down the black shawl trembled.

I leaned over and took possession of them. "What is it?" I whispered, for I read infinite sadness in the faded eyes; it gave my heart, that was always absurdly soft, a sharp twinge of pain. I could never bear to look upon suffering, and I had become very tender towards the patient old lady, who always sat there waiting—waiting .

"They all go," she said, and her voice, like her hands, shook. '' They all go, and I am left alone —so very tired and so lonely. Sometimes I

dream, as I sit here, that they have come back, and then the light leaves the sky—and everything is dark and cold and lonely again." ' My eyes blurred over the pitiful tragedy of age. "But one day—one day you will meet them all again," I murmured, offering the usual chilly, stereotyped form of consolation, and feeling at the same time what a hopelessly inadequate thing it was. When one is so old and tired and worn with waiting, something more is needed—something nearer, closer, warmer, more human. She expressed the same thought in her reply. "So the parson says," she answered, '' but somehow I don't seem to get much comfort from it lately." The faded old eyes were regarding me anxiously, fearfully even. "Is it—is it very wicked to feel that way?" I softly smoothed the withered fingers. "No—oh no," I breathed, "for God surely knows —he surely understands your loneliness and your ache for them. It cannot be wicked to want those whom we have always loved —to want them, not words." A faint ray of comfort stole into the lonely old face, and she held tightly to my hand. But she lapsed into silence, and her gaze strained beyond the ridges, where the sunset flamed gloriously through the sentinel pines. "Grandma, you'd better come in; the sun's setting, and it'll be cold directly, "called her grand-daughter, a woman getting on to the-shady side of life her-: self, from the inner recesses of the house.

''ln a minute, Mary, in a minute," returned the old lady. '' He's not quite down yet. And her eyes followed the big fiery ball as it slowly drooped to

the sky-line, and the level rays seemed to rest upon the face of her like a benediction.

"I always like to look upon the sun going down," she said to me confidentially; "seems to me the only thing that never ehanges. The sun was set-ting-like that when I came over the hills to this place, as a bride—sixty years ago and more. And when my little boy was born, my first little baby, I remember the sunset flashing in at the window like that, straight and level, just as if he wanted to take-a good look at the little black head on my arm. "..>■. Her voice died away; she was back again in the long-ago days, her first little baby cuddled in her arms, and the round Jolly sun giving her congratulations through the window. But presently she went, on, and the ancient sorrow trembled through her words. "The day, they brought my man home —he was killed by a falling tree out in the scrub —the sun sort of mourned with me that day. He pulled the big grey clouds over his face as he went down; he couldn't bear to look on my grief. But when my boy married —" and the sorrow changed mar-

vellously to joy—'' he fairly danced that day. Seemed as if he almost laughed out loud to see everyone so happy —for by then even I was learning to forget —a little. So I always like to watch him going down; I fancy, he is bidding

good-night to me, and telling me that I have one old friend left. Look at him—how nice and round and jolly he looks, smiling at us right across the world. There! he's gone]" As the big glowing disk dropped below the horizon the old lady rose and hobbled indoors. I drew a deep breath and looked across at the place where he had disappeared. "Birth and marriage and death/" I mused, *' all" the great things of life pass like the shadows of a dream, but the sun never fails. He is always there —full of warmth and light and cheer — an old friend at whose hearth we can warm our hands and our hearts when all other fires fail" , A chill little wind, sobbed in from the pines, and away in the west a lonely star trembled into the/deepening sky. All the vivid sunset draperies melted into the evening gray, and a belated bird winged a swift,- anxious flight towards a bit of serub-land heai the lagoon. Then I, too, rose and went indoors. S. I. B.