NEW ZEALAND STORIES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 21, 23 November 1910, Page 52

NEW ZEALAND STORIES.

VISION.

By

G. O. BRAGH

(The Editor desires to announce that New Zealand Stories by New Zealand writers, will be published on this page regularly. The page will be open to any contributor, and all accepted stories will be paid for at current rates. Terse, bright sketches of Dominion life and people, woven in short story form, are required, and should be headed “JSeio Zealand Stories.”}

THE supper party stowed away in a far corner of the room was more diversified and cosmopoliton than at first sight appeared; more diversified . and cosmopolitan, indeed, than the uscal run of aftertheatre gatherings in the big Willis-street hotel. Three men sat at the table: Wilson, the English tourist; Brady, the New Zealand journalist: amt the Indian. AH three were young, all three seemed to attract a second glance from whoever looked their way. A fortnight previously the Englishman and the Indian had met unexpectedly at Rotorua; their chance Oxford acquaintance of seven years back had been deemed good and sufficient reason fur their completing the New Zealand tour in company. Brady, the third and youngest of the trio, had never travelled beyond the Dominion. His horizon so far had been bounded on the north by Auckland, on the south by Timaru, on the east by a certain newspaper editor, on the west by pay-day. How came he of the company? Hard to explain, perhaps. Brady had a way of waking up suddenly and finding himself in strange places amt stranger company. The day he first walked into the reporters’ room, delightfully fresh and green, his face lit with youthful confidence, his mind aglow with ideas of his own and ideals of “ the profession,” men had liked him. file freshness was gone, th-> greenness was gone—so were most of the ideas and (strange!) all the ideals—but men still liked him. The disillusionment that comes t .arly to most men in life, and especially early to all men in journalism, had not soured him overmuch: the toningdown of his tiro-youthful exuberance had left him still his humanness and his unconscious attractiveness. ...” Likeable fellow, Brady,” m st men sa d. He was. This much of Brady) because- it explains in part whv Wilson asked hilji to make a thiid at the theatre on the strength of an afternoon's barroom acquaintance; also because later on this story has some little to do with Brady. Good food, good wine, good tobacco are marvellous things for putting some men at their ease; be it noted therefore in due praise of the food, the wine, the tobacco, that the three were now gliding placidly along on a flow of easy inconsequential talk concerning innumerable of God's creatures and things, the talk that comes only when men aie thoroughly at ease with themselves and their surroundings. The conversation had wandered past the pleasant by-ways of art and letters, through the musty dismal alleys of Socialism and the political situation. At length it turned to the absorbing mystery of the east. The Indian, reluctant at first to speak of his own country, yielded gradually to the soft .persuasiveness of Brady. The latter, eager with the curiosity of inexperience, listened in rapt attention to the low drawling tones speaking with hideous familiarity of the devilish arts of fakir, priest, and devotee. Wilson, inured by constant travel to the wonderful ami blase with experience, evinced less interest in the conversation: perhaps. also, with a recollection of retain queer rumours concerning the Indian at Oxford, he deliberately withheld himself from being drawn into the subject with too groat an interest. Be this last • s it may, the fact remains that for the rest of the evening the Englishman Mt back in his chair calmly and vacantly Smoking, the while Brady's grev dreaming eyes were on the Indian’s face with a gaze unnatural in its steadfastness and intensity.

The hour for departure came. Down the hotel stairs Wilson strolled unconcernedly in front; Brady gripped the Indian's arm and withheld his progress for a few paces. “Do you really mean to say that you Indians have the power of laying open a man's future?” The Indian replied softly, almost laughingly: "Well, yes—under certain conditions.” “And have you yourself this power?” Brady's tones -were forced and tense. “Perhaps—but don't be a fool, young un!” The Indian was a decent Indian, and he also was beginning to like Brady. But Brady, dreamer and visionary, as his Celtic forbears had been dreamers and visionaries for generations gone, was revolving in his mind a new and romantic project. With all his unassuming modesty, he was not unconscious of his own ability, and not all his ambition had gone with those vanished ideals of journalism. And now to see for one fleeting moment the future of his dream! Two nights later the Indian was in his hotel bedroom; the door was locked.

Lying in the bed was Brady—at least, what seemed the body of Brady : he gave no sign of life. The Indian paced the floor uneasily, his eyes wandering fitfully to the recumbent figure on the bed. Unpleasant thoughts occupied his mind—"l was a fool to let him persuade me, but somehow he did. Still, he may come' out of it all right.” Some time passed in this fashion; then Brady stirred and tossed unevenly. Three minutes more and he sat bolt upright, gazing round him vaguely, . unknowingly. Gradually his eyes regained their normal intelligence, and took in something of their surroundings. As he rose and staggered to the table, some vague memory seemed to come back upon him with increasing force. He remained thus staring blankly ahead till at length full realisation broke upon him. “Great God! Am I to become that—thing?” A good many people who knew Brady and bis brilliant prospects wondered what was at the bottom of it all; and at certain hotel bars in the eity some newspaper men talked solemnly. On the whole, however, the affair caused somewhat less than the usual nine days’ wonder. In New Zealand, after all, inexplicable auk-ides are common enough.