CHAPTER II.

Observer, 21 December 1893, Page 14

CHAPTER 11.

An old kauri tree stump is not a tragic, nor even a romantic object to introduce, at this point, into a love tragedy, nor was there anything tragic or romantic, but, if the truth must be told, a decidedly disreputable appearance about the young man who reclined thereon; nevertheless the commonplaces and unromantic realities are often very nearly allied to the unreal and awful in this curious, compound mixture which we call human life, and Dennis Harcourt, disillusioned already of the glamour of bush solitude, weary of his swag and his trampings tnrough these Northern gumfields, out of conceit with his circumstances,,, his friends and himself most of all, was near the crisis that would shape, .finally and irrevocably, for good or for evil, the course of his future. A clump of companion kauris surrounded the fallen monarch that made his seat. Their branches, swaying with the breeze, were reflected by a pool, whose deep, dark shadows caught the motion, without the sunshine and beauty, of the green boughs above, and transformed them into fantastic water-sprites, dancing eerily over its turbid surface. The young man's restless glance took in the pool, the weird surroundings, then strayed to the bush-track beyond, and was suddenly arrested. Coming slowly along that track was an object so peculiar in appearance that Dennis's first sensation was one of dread, until he perceived that the creature was really human. An ancient Maori hobbled painfully towards him, bent almost double beneath the weight of a hundred years and shrunk with the ravages of rheumatism, until his body had become the shapeless, attenuated spectre of a man. "Who he was, or where he " had come from, Dennis could not imagine, but pity for a human being more wretched than himself, and a feeling of host-ship in. this little nook he had selected for his night's resting-place, made him get off the tree-stump and' goodnaturedly offer his visitor some tobacco. " Tenakoe, rangatira " (how-do-you-do, young gentleman), the old Maori said," and~"strefcned""6uf" an arm looking so like a withered branch with a claw at the end that again Dennis was conscious of a strange sensation thrilling every nerve. The Maori squatted on the ground, and from the way

in which his shrunken jaws worked, Dennis knew he was enjoying the tobacco. At length he paused, and in fairly good English, spoke. " The pakeha is sad." "Now, how the mischief did he know that," thought Dennis, forgetting that sorrow is a language the rudest savage can read. Aloud he replied : "Yes, a great trouble has befallen me, father." " And you have- come to the pool to forget?" the old Maori said, watching the other furtively from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. " You are brave, pakeha. My ancestors bathed in this pool, but they^were a fearless race. The young men of to-day are not as their fathers of oldBut you — you are a pakeha rangatira. How comes it that you have learned the secret of the pool?" " Secret. I know no secret," Dennis said amazed. "Is there then a charm about this pool, my father ?" The old man came closer. "Few Maoris know," he said, "and you are the first pakeha to whom it has been breathed, but your face is very sorrowful, and, perchance, if I relieve you of your burden of care, my good spirit will bear me more swiftly to the Reinga (spirit world). Listen. There is a spirit dwelling in these waters whose name is Oblivion. He whom sorrow has smitten heavily has but to bathe in the pool of Oblivion and his evil memories are no more. My grandfather had six sons ; they were taken captive and killed and eaten by the enemy, all but my father who escaped through subterfuge devised by his favourite wahine, and afterwards saw her smi tten cad with a mere ; his w>men had their infants torn from: " their arms and were themselves given as slaves 'to other chiefs. My father and my grandfather both bathed in this pool. " And you ?" Dennis asked. The old Maori finished his tobacco, and crawled slowly to his feet. " I am so near the end," he said, where all is forgetting. Evil memories crowd thick upon me, but in the grave there is oblivion. Farewell, stranger." Dennis watched the queer, bent figure receding through the trees, and when it was out of earshot, burst into a mirthless laugh. " A modern Lethe, ha, ha ! The old beggar's got an inventive faculty though, and how he did chew that tobacco." He finished his pipe, brooding meantime, with hitter satisfaction, on the advantages of a solitary, hand-to-mouth gumdigger'slife, and finally rolled himself in his blanket, beneath the shelter of his canvas dwelling, and went to sleep. Now, a strange thing happened to Dennis Harcourt, for as he slept he beheld before him the pool, so plain that he knew it to be more than mortal dream. The shadow of the leaves moved across the water, but slowly and more slow, until at last they stood still, and he wondered that their quivering had ceased, until he looked aloft and saw that all the branches of all the trees around the pool were very still, and every leaf was still, and every blade of grass was still, though the night breeze stirred the forest without ; then he wondered no more, and a great calm fell upon his own soul. And there arose in the midst of waters a figure— the figure of a woman beautiful to look upon, whose features were yet a blank which he could not fathom. Her voice was low and soothing as the last note of a vesper hymn, and she stretched forth her arms to him ond hex words fell sweetly on his ears. "Come to me, oh sleeper, and thou shalt know a deeper sleep, which will dispel the sadness of thy past as the morning sun dispels the darkness. Bathe in"! the pool of Oblivion, for only therein canst the wounded heart find ease, the weary spirit rest. So shall thy sorrow be as the clouds of the morning, which flee away." With a violent start, Dennis awoke. It was pitchy dark, but a quiet lapping manifested the near presence of the pool. Unsteadily he fumbled among his things for a tallow dip, lighted it, and went to the edge of the water. He knew now that what the old Maori said was true — that here beside him lay an effectual balm for his sorrow, with the power to obliterate the past and make a new future for himself, unhampered by haunting thoughts of what was and what might have been. One plunge, and' he would emerge a new being, life before him, and the distressing events of the past obliterated from his mind forever and ever. Pale to the lips with excitement, he tore off his coat. The night-air penetrated to his skin, but he knew nothing of it, standing there irresolute, on the extreme edge of the pool. The lurid flickerings of the candle shone for one moment across his face, intensifying its' drawn " haggard expression, then lost themselves in the black \ depth berieath. For that moment Dennis Harcourt's future Hung

upon a thread. His arms wont up to make the dive, then fell, as a long-forgotten picture flashed across his mind. A war-telegram, a newspaper list of fatalities, and a curly-headed boy of six, with his little arms around a fainting, weeping woman, his little soul absorbed in one silent, passionate prayer, " Oh, God, make me as brave a man as my father." That was all, but it made our hero resume his coat, and blush for shame at the deed he had been about to do. He, a soldier's son, to desire in this cowardly way to efface his whole past life, to forget the many friends and interests with which that life had abounded,' to wipe out all the good and happy memories of his childhood and his boyhood, and why, forsooth ? Because a girl had proved faithless and unworthy of honest love. How much nobler fi nd braver and altogether worthier of his manhood would it not be to return to the duties of every-day business life, and in the faithful performance of those very duties find a new strength and earnestness of character, and, despite the cruel blow of fortune which he had once imagined himself unable to survive, make himself a power in ihe world and his name honoured and respected among men. Dennis Harcourt has found for himself another pool of Lethe than that to which fate's finger at one time seemed to point, but the original pool is still there, hidden deep as its own black depths, in the heart of the Northern wilds, and the seeker has only to search long enough, and far enough, to find it.