IF TO-DAY BE SWEET

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17888, 2 July 1926, Page 16

IF TO-DAY BE SWEET

“ STAR’S ” NEW SERIAL.

By

DOROTHY ROGERS.

CHAPTER VIII.— (Continued.) The girl moved a little irritably. “ I know,” said Paul swiftly. “ But as he is at home, working for fame for the sake of Miss Gentian, may I -be adopted, for the time being, as a poor substitute?’” •• He turned suddenly to look straight into Gentian’s face. She laughed a little strangely. His words seemed a challenge to her recent train of thought. ” Yes,” she answered deliberately, “I will adopt you.” Then impulsively she rose to here feet. “Look!” she said. The horizon line of sea and sky was a deep rose melting into purple, and over the snow blue-purple of the Esterels there surged a riot of flaming red and lambent gold, on which tiny dark specks of cloud formed and miraculously disappeared and formed again. The whole sky, from the gorgeous glowing of the west up to the immensity of the blue zenith, seemed to be palpitating with living ecstasy, like a tremendous, silent song, bathing their upturned faces with the outmost eddies of its unearthly melody of light. For some moments they watched; instinctively they almost listened, but to their ears came only the slow, sighing wash of the sea. ‘"lf only it could last!” said Paul softly. There was a marvellously youthful wistfulness in his face CHAPTER IX. Paul proceeded to engage a car and a chauffeur and to map otit long delightful runs in order that Gentian and her mother should see as much as possible of their beautiful surroundings. Nobody could have been a better guide to the charms of the Cote d’Azur than lie, who knew both the French and the Italian Riviera almost as he knew his native Cotswolds. But, although he had some idea of luring them on into Italy, they preferred to remain where they were, and the little frontier bridge beyond Mentone, where the Customs officers loiter and smoke, marked the farthest point of their drive in that direction. Of course, they went to Monte Carlo, to stroll in the delectable gardens, so full of strange exotic trees and sinister memories; to admire the great brilliant parterres before the .Casino, and watch the pigeons outside the Cafe de Paris; to walk along the flowery terraces, stage-like in their arrangement of wide, flights of snowy steps and balustrades, of tall palms and free-fems, with the great Casino in the background, blotting out the brooding heights above the town, and the heedless blue sea dreamily smiling below. And last, but not least, they went into the Rooms, rich in extravagant adornment, where the very deadness of the atmosphere, contrasting with the vivifying fragrance outside, seemed to Gentian like a subtle menace. There Paul began to teach her the intricacies of roulette, which aroused in her a keen interest only vanquished by her desire to be out of doors once more, breathing the fresh living air. They explored in the car all the lovely little white towns nestling under the heights and reflecting their beauty in the still sea. from Mentone to Cannes, and on from Cannes again through St Raphael and ancient Frejus to St Tropez and Cavalaire. or over the beautiful wooded mountain roads among the Esterels, where the great cork-trees brooded in dusky silence. Often Paul had .to call a halt for Gentian to alight and gather starry pale yellow’ and pink and white meseinbrianthemums amid their thick fleshy green fingers, or purple sea-lavender, or a spray from some overhanging mimosa or pepper-tree. He told her laughingly that if she wished she should even have the giant blossoming stem of the aloe, “le candelabre due bon Dieu,” as the peasants called it. poised high above its clump of sharp-pointed steely green leaves. More than once did they drive inland. by fields of roses or jasmine or low shrubs of big-balled mimosa, grown to make perfume in the little town of Grasse that perched above on a spur of the lower ridge of the Alpes Mari-' times. Gentian liked the quaint town with its boulevards lined with planes or fronded date-palms, its scented streams, and its dark narrow’ cobbled streets dropping steeply down the hill.

She liked better still the drive on along the winding road high above the undulating low country, past aloes and olive-groves and small straggling hamlets where graceful mimosa-trees spread their golden feathqry branches in the sunshine, and down to a tiny village that hid itself coyly amid odorous orange-groves at the entrance to a deep gorge.

They drove there one day together, withput Mrs Armishaw, who did not always feel inclined to accompany them on these excursions. The village lay in a bath of sunshine, exhaling great puffs of scented air that met them as they descended the winding road.

Paul made the chauffeur stop the car on the bridge that spanned a turbulent little stream, rushing forth from the gorge in a confusion of white foam and glacier-blue water; the bridge itself, and indeed the whole village, being spanned jn their turn by an immensely high causeway towering far above their heads. There Paul filled Gentian's hands with orange-blossom bought from the children who proffered it, clustering and jabbering round the car.* She buried her face in the lovely sprays, then looked up, intoxicated by their warm sensuous fragrance, and laughed with the sheer delight of the di?zy sky, the great aspiring mountain walls and the noifcy song of the river. To Paul as she did so all the essential blue of sky and stream was concentrated in her wide eyes. He drew a sharp breath. With gay unconsciousness she continued to gaze in almost passionate worship at her surroundings. Finally her exultant glance fell upon him. For an instant she seemed about to speak, then, as though realising the impossibility of expressing her feelings, she shook her head, laughing again softly. Paul bent suddenly forward, and his voice w’as a little husky as he bade the chauffeur drive on up the gorge.

Gentian had driven up before with him and her mother, and it was because of her intense appreciation of it that Paul had arranged this second expedition.

They proceeded slowly up the tortuous road, overshadowed on . the one side by the cliff walls, bounded on the other by a low stone parapet beyond which a sheer tangle of rock and undergrowth and slim trees fell to the swift torrent rushing in the gulf far below.

Once they passed a slender waterfall suspended like a silver scarf in an immense dark cavern. Twice they passed through black tunnels cut into the dripping stalagmitic rock, and from the second they emerged suddenly into sunshine at the head of the gorge. There, at a ; little restaurant, they lunched upon a. delicious omelette and drank the local vin de Gaude strongly recommended by the burly proprietor, one enthusiastic finger waggling impressively against his nose. Afterwards they v ent down behind the restaurant to where, standing on the narrow bridge built (as he proudly told them) by that same proprietor, they watched the torrent at its aeons-old task of wearing away the sheer narrow walls of its prison. Only a very few feet separated the water-worn cliffs just there, and the stream twisted and roared deafeningly as it hurled itself through, to rest in a wide pool below before continuing its tempestuous career.

Gentian expressed a wish to walk back to the little village at the bottom in order to pause exactly wherever she might please, to take in more easily the endless beauties of the scene; so Paul ordered the chauffeur to go on with the car and await them in the village. He and she followed more leisurely: she utterly absorbed in the grandeur of the great cliffs that seemed to stand forth with more rugged picturesqueness at every turn of the road; Paul, unknown to Gentian, utterly absorbed in her, watching each graceful tilt of her face, each movement of her lips, each lift and fall of the long dark lashes over her wonder-filled eyes. Occasionally the light breeze bore to him a faint fragrance from her, a fragrance he had learnt to associate with her alone. He drank it in greedily. When they reached the vast high cavern of the waterfall she wanted to climb up and round behind the swaying bridal cascade. He had the joy of holding her hand in his firm grip as he helped her up the steep wet step scut into the rock.

Later on, when the overwhelming awe of jagged barren rock had given way to milder heights, draped with shrubby undergrowth and a few trees, they sat down for awhile to rest. Beside them a tiny rivulet chuckled and dripped, hidden .in a smooth mass of cool damp maiden-hair fern. Gentian dipped her hand in it and raised it, besprinkled with shining drops. Her other hand held a long trail of wild smiiax with its beautiful arrow-head leaves. Paul gently withdraw’ this from her fingers and began abstractedly to play with it, softly stroking the leaves she had touched.

Never in all his life had he imposed upon himself such constant restraint, a restraint which, on more than one occasion, had she but known it, Gentian had made almost impossible for him to bear. At times he felt he was paying exceeding dear for the privilege of being near her. It was, however, a privilege he had no intention of forfeiting. , After a mutually contended silence she turned to him.

” Doesn’t a place like this make you long to paint or write something that could magnificently express your feelings?” ' *

Paul looked .at her, then up to the dizzy ridge against the sky. “Yes—l don’t know—do you think it does?” he questioned hesitatingly. “ Perhaps you have seen so many wonderful things in various parts of the world that this doesn’t affect you in the same way,” she remarked, a hint of disappointment in her voice. “No, no; it isn’t that. Beautiful things always affect me enormously.' I don't believe in comparison; it spoils the one thing without being able to add one iota to the other.”

For an instant his rapid brain flashed to his fateful comparison between this girl at his side and Lallie; then back it darted and he continued to speak, slowly, wrinkling up his brOWs at the opposite cliff of the ravine, his hands still playing idly 'with' the smiiax trail.

“ I don’t think it much matters that one can’t paint, or write some great poem about any specially beautiful thing. Very few can do that, but everybody can feel the beauty. I think, somehow, that that is what matters most. Surely,” he added musingly. “surely all that beauty can’t pass through the soul without leaving some trace? - It; can’t, be only the sordid and horrible things that leave their mark?” •

Gentian was silent a moment, struck by the wistfulness she had felt behind words. Then she said very gently: No, I think that , when people are truly influenced by beauty there must inevitably be a corresponding and strengthened beauty in their souls.” Paul looked at her whimsically, a c 'l ian ge in his mood. According to the lines, * There’s so much good in the w’orst of us,’ etc, ch?” he remarked lightly. Exactly! ” she answered, laughing u mwardly a little disconcerted by the abruptness of the change. (To be Continued.)