WHERE LOVE IS

Taranaki Daily News, 20 December 1933, Page 12

WHERE LOVE IS

(By

V. M. BELLAMY.)

Across the hills near at hand the summer sun cast a golden glow, but the higher ridges in the distance were a deep blue, overhung with heavy storm clouds, which were slowly creeping nearer and nearer, blotting out the sunshine as they advanced. In the wake of the shadows the rain was marching in a vast blue slant, the young woman seated on the bench outside the dilapidated cottage door already felt the cooling effect on the hot air. Picking up the bowl of peas she had been shelling she entered the the kitchen door. Discontent shadowed her eyes as they fell on the various shabby things it contained. The curtains at the window W ere shabby and. smoke-stained, for the kitchen range smoked incessantly. The worn out and. shabby linoleum showed the well scrubbed boards in many places —the drab ’paper and paintwork. To young Mrs. Cranby the whole effect was intensely depressing. , . It was strange that John, who of course was seldom in it, other than to take his meals, did not notice his wife’s growing discontent and disgust at the dreary aspect of the old cottage. When she 'had mentioned painting and renovating it, and the purchasing of better furniture, it was only the very real need for rigid economy that had led him to brush the matter aside .as one that could wait for better times. John, sincerely in love with his wife, and idolising his small son, mentally decided that his wife’s quiet and pallor showed her need of a holiday, which he would find it hard to afford, and looked hopefully for a better return for his labour in the near future. ■ Placing her bowl on the table Maiy Cranby returned to the door and stared, unseeing, towards the gate. Her husband was away at a stock sale some ten miles away, so that she did not expect his return till late aftemnoon. Therefore she was somewhat surprised to hear the sound'of an approaching car, for the farm terminated a blind mud road, with only four settlers on its six mile stretch, all of whom owned cars in varying stages of rattles, and, the hum of the car now carefully dodging as many bumps as possible on the rough road told her that it was a different class of car from those owned by the hard pressed farmers. Even as the first rain drops spattered on the roof the big car drew to a stop at the gate, and a tall, well-dressed man stepped out to draw a cry of astonished recognition from Mary Cranby. Hady Maine, the spoilt only son of a wealthy sheepfarmer, had courted Mary Pierce for two years, until his drinking habits had caused Mary to finally refuse to become his wife. Vowing to come back cured of his weakness he had set out for a trip abroad and then Mary had met, and been won by, quiet, sincere, John Cranby, and had begun her married life on a more moderate scale, on a not overlarge sheep station. Hit badly by the slump, he had been forced to give up the holding and take up this isolated but cheap farm and begin again. Mary had at fiaet been content to accent the shabby, ready furnished place as she had found it, so that every penny could go into the farm, but John had come to accept the bare and shabby place with the passing of time, and failed to realise the altered conditions of his wife s life. Accustomed to beauty and luxury, the poverty had begun to sear her soul, and now the longing for the old famihar way of luxury rushed over like a tidal flood, as her visitor approached through the rain. Perhaps that is why her tired face lit up as she took his hand m greeting perhaps that is why she presently found the walls of her proud reserve were down, and she was pouring out her troubles to a very sympathetic listener. She even found herself listening to an arraignment of John, that at any other time she would bitterly have resented, for asking her to share such a miserable existence, and when at last Had y suggested that she leave the whole thmg behind her like a bad dream, and that she and little John should start life anew in her own proper sphere, she hesitated only a little, and gradually acquiesced in the plans he made for her future. John would naturally set her free, and when the unpleasantness of the divorce

was finished with Hadly would make up to her for all she had suffered, and as his wife she would be in her rightful place in the world. Packing in a suitcase a few little things for herself and little John, she wrote a hasty note to her husband, blaming him for having expected her to live in such dreary surroundings, and telling him of her intention to go back to her aunt, but omitting all mention of Hadly Maine, asking only to be set free as soon as possible. Leaving the note in a conspicuous place Mary made her way through what was now a steady downpour to the waiting car. As car gathered speed her first doubts assailed her. Had she been quite fair to John? She remembered with a sick feeling of shame his hard, patient toil, day in and day out, in all weathers. Glancing back she saw that they were already out of sight of the cottage, and a growing uneasiness filled. Would Hadly ever take the place of John? Would the child ever love him as he had his own father? She tried to tell herself that he would have every advantage with Hadly, but found it unconvincing comfort. The lurching and slowing of the car at last roused her from her thoughts, and she realised that the heavy car, built for metal roads, was going to find it hard to get through the rapidly deepening mud. At last the road commenced to wind uphill and the car, after labouring unavailing, with racing engine and spinning wheels, came to a stop. “Have you any chains, Hadly?” she asked, a feeling of panic gripping her. If John should find her here with Hadly! “I never thought of them,” Hadly replied. “I shall have to go to the nearest farm and try to borrow some. We can’t stop here.” Pulling his coat collar up about his neck, he trudged off through the rain, leaving Mary to wait with the sleeping child on her knee for his return. The minutes seemed interminable, and a growing sense of having abandoned John in his hour of need made her sudflenly long for the shelter of her own shabby little home. At last she could bear it no longer, and wrapping the sleeping child tighter in his rug she alighted and set out the way she had come, leaving her suitcase in the car. It seemed to Mary that she trudged for hcurs through the rain and mud before, soaking wet dazed and tired, she realised that her own gate barred the road. Lifting her weary head, she became aware that a pall of smoke hung over the familiar place, and she gazed uncomprehendingly for several minutes at the blackened ruin that had been her home before the truth penetrated that the cottage had been burned in her absence. ’The rain had been unable to quench the fierce blazing of the old timbers, and very little remained. Even as the truth penetrated her tired brain, there came to her ears the familiar ratle of John’s car, and when he drew up and gazed in astonishment at the soaked figures of his wife and little son, and then at the burned home, it never occurred to him to wnde'r why they had never sought shelter in a nearby shed. He put his wife’s plight down to her fright and helplessness to cope with the situation, and he attributed her overwrought weeping to the fact that they had lost their home.

When the new little home stood, neat and dainty, on a fresh site, and Mary, bright faced and singing, went about her her daily tasks, he at last noticed the change in her, and mentally decided that the fresh surroundings had been as beneficial as a holiday, and that the new and rather expensive furniture had been a wise investment after all. It had given him back the old bright Mary he had married. As for Mary, she has never mentioned to her husband how nearly the dreary, shabby old cottage, had brought all their lives to shipwreck, with its depressing atmosphere that had so undermined her mental outlook as to allow her to listen to Hadly, who, she realises, would never have given her the happiness that John has done. It took that ride through the rain, and the dreary walk home, to teach her the true meaning of “Home,” which, after all, is “Where Love Is.”