MEMORY FLOWERS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 1, 5 July 1911, Page 55

MEMORY FLOWERS.

By

E. A.

-y ONNY WILSON and Violet I Crichton were perched on the back seat of her father’s sulky, - and their tongues were going —or rather her’s was mostly—nineteen to the dozen as the saying is. Vi and her father had been down to the city for a month, and as it was the first time Vi had been off her father's farm far up country, she was bubbling over with descriptions of things she had seen and places she had visited. “And Aunt Letty was just like what we thought, Uonny. You know—still' and prim and starchy. She tried to persuade Dad to take me to the theatre in the afternoon, ’cos she said night was too late for little girls. And I told her I wasn’t a little girl—l will be twelve next birthday. That's not a little girl, is it, Donny? No, ’course not. But she just unified. You’ve no idea how nasty she was when she snifi'ed like that. But I persuaded Dad and told him it was the biggest, biggest thing I’d been wanting, so he took me. Oh, Donny, it was . . it was . . I just ean’t tell you how lovely it was. I didn’t have time to write, Donny. I meant to every day, but there was such a lot to do. I don't think I’m much good at writing letters. But 1 loved yours. But what is the secret? I’ve wondered and wondered, and I’ve just been wild to ask you. You’ll tell me now, won't you?” “Look out. or you’ll be off,” said Don as tne wheels plunged over a stone and into a rut. “Here hold on to me. I’ll hang to the back.” He slipped an arm through hers and gripped it tight. He felt a satisfying sense of protecting her, and a vague wish Zoated in his mind that the horse would bolt or bushrangers would bail them up or something happen just so that he could show Vi how he would save her. It was a boyish idea, of course, but then he was only a boy after all. But he was sixteen—four or five years older than .Vi —and all bis life had acted as a sort of watch-dog and guardian to her. Her

mother died when she was a baby, and Dad and Don were the two first words she learned to lisp. His name was John really, but he was always Don to her, though he would never allow anyone but her to use the name. "But what’s the secret?” persisted Vi. “You mustn’t ask yet,” he said. "It'd spoil it. Wait till we get down to the Den alone, so’s 1 can tell you comfy.” The Den was their own particular territory and playground. It was a shallow' little eave scooped out of the six foot high bank of the stream that formed the boundary between the two farms. The stream ran through a clump of bush, and the Den was shadowed by thick bushes and tall gums. A big flax bush grew on the little strip of grassy sward before the cave and screened it from entrance. With the secrecy whjeh children love they had made a ladder from the rough trimmed trunk of ;i young fir, and when they climbed up *it from the Den they carefully threw it down behind the bush. They got down by the simple process of sliding, without any regard for their clothes. The Den had always been the background against which they bad built their play and it had figuerd as every description of residence, from a baron’s castle to a smuggler’s cave, or a Red Indian wigwam to a bushranger's camp. “Let's run down there the minute we got in,” said Vi. “That’s right,” agreed Don.

Sure enough when they pulled up at the door of the Crichton's house, she would hardly wait to receive the welcome of the servants and the governess. She hastily hugged and kissed her old nurse, her governess and her dog with equal warmth, and then turned to hex

father. “Daddy, do you mind if we run off. Donny’s got a surprise to show me. ’ “All right,” laughed her father. “Be off with you.” In a few minutes they were at the Den and had scrambled down. Vi stood looking with staring eyes at the cave. “ That’s the surprise, Vi. \\ hat do you think of it?” said Don. “Oh, Don. It’s just lovely!” gasped “I borrowed a pick and spade,” said Don, “and 1 just dug it out and put the sand in a sack and hauled it up top and threw it away. But come on in. It’s big inside.” Be stooped and crawled into the hole at the back of the shallow cave and Vi hastily followed. An entrance had been tunneled for a few feet, and then the end enlarged to a little chamber, high enough to sit upright in. “It’s beautiful, Donny,” said Vi. “But I do wish I could have helped.” “But it isn’t finished, Vi.” said Don, quickly. “It was pretty hard work by myself, though the sand is fairly easy to scoop out. But now you’re here to help well make it ever so much bigger and higher, and we’ll make a fireplace and a chimney through the roof. But I wanted to do enough to make a surprise for you. But there’s more of the surprise, Vi. Look in there.” He pointed to a little hole scooped out of the side of the cave and deepened below the level of the floor. In the dim light it had escaped Vi’s notice, but now she poked her head and shoulders in. “It’s water,” cried Vi. “A little well of our own. Donny, how clever you are. And what a lovely scent. What is it?” as she sniffed long ami deep. Donny cracked a match and held it over the little pool. “Violets —my own special flower”—and Vi flung herself down ami leant her face down to the blossoms, drawing deep breaths of the scent. “I. got them from Rogers,” said Don. “Von know he’s always trying to grow them, but he says it’s difficult, because of the sun. Be gave me some right kind of earth too, and said if they were kept in a cool damp place tney ought to grow all right It was that that made me start to

dig out a shelter for them am: made me think of making the cave.” For weeks after the two dug and delved and filled their clothes and hair with sand, to the mystification of Vi’s nurse, who looked after her clothes and vowed the girl must be living in a rabbit burrow. When their labours were finished they had a fair-sized room, with the roof‘high enough to almost stand up under; a fireplace scooped out and fitted with stones, and a hole dug through the roof above it to act as a chimney. For a year they revelled in the delights of their secret hiding place, and in their season the violets throve amazingly. It was a regular ritual for the two whenever they arrived at The Den to lay down and poke their heads into the “violethouse” and inhale long breaths of the cool faint scent. But a day came which brought an end to their play. Don’s father and mother had decided to go home to the Old Country. A relative had died, and it was necessary for Mr. Wilson to go to settle up the affairs, and they both thought it would be a good thing to take Don ami show him something of the Home Country and to travel over the Continent. The night before the departure the two children were sitting in The Den. The sun had set and already swift shadows were dropping over the little stream, the trees and the bushes. The two sat in silence watching the glow fade from the sky, and Vi slipped her hand into Don’s. Don clenched it tight. “We must go Vi,” he said, slowly. “I promised your father to bring you back by dark.” “Yes, Donny,” whispered Vi, with a half sob in her voice, and pressing close to his side. “But I don’t want to go.” “I don’t, either, dear,” said Don. “But I'll come back for you? Vi, just as soon's I can. Three years, father says, Vi. I’ll be 20 then and you'll lie 15. We won’t have to wait long them, Vi. and we'll never have to leave -each <4 her again.” “Three years,” wailed Vi. “Oh. Donny, dear, I'm so miserable.” Donny slipped his arms about her shoulders and she

buried her face in his breast, sobbing bitterly. Don looked down on the limit head with misery in his eves. “Don’t, dear, don’t cry,” he said; “It makes it hardern ever. I’ll write to you often, and you’ll write to me.” “Write.” sobbed Vi. “But letters are such useless thing-. It’ll lx* so lonely without you, Donny. Oh. must you go?” “You know, dear,” said Don, “how I liegged to Im* allowed to slay here. 7 Vi choked ba k her sobs. “Yes, Donny/’ she said, meekly, “I know. I’m better now’, Donny.”' She stood up, ami Don also rose slow ly. In silence they rinsed out the teacups and the batten'd old billy in the stream, and hung them on their little pegs in the cave. “Will you pull a violet and give it me, Vi,” said Don. It had beta a compart that the violets in tin* “violet-house” were not to be pulled, but now Vi pulled two or three and put them in his button hole They climbed the tret* trunk ladder and threw it down in its accu-tomed place, and then walked slowly along the little path to the usual parting place at tin* edge* of the bush. They halted and Don put his hands on the child’s shoulders. “Look. Vi dear,” he said, “we’re both young — ■ you (specially. But I know 1 can never change, and 1 love you now and always \vill. Three years is a long time and you'll be growing up while I’m away. I feel afraid Vi, and I don’t know what of. But you’ll always remember Vi, I’m coming bark to you just the first minute I ran, and you’ll remember how I'm loving von and waiting for the day I’ll see you.” “I'll remember Donny,” she whispered. “Don’t come over to see us tomorrow 7 Vi,” said Don, “I should blub and make you look silly, and I’d rather say good-bye here alone.”

For the next two years Donny wrote long letters regularly. He had been put to one of the public schools, ami was going to college for a year or two after. Vi wrote scrappy letters at odd intervals. admits d she was a bad correspondent, but Donny treasured the brief notes and kept them locked in a big dispatch box he had bought for the purpose. 'Then a sudden series of mis fortunes struck swiftly. Donny was away for a vacation on a Continental tour, so was some weeks late in receiving a tear-stained note from Vi. Her father had been ill. but she had no idea it was serious, and then suddenly he had died. lie received a second letter at the same time as this, saying that Aunt Letty had come and was going to take her away and look after her. A week later Donny’s father handed him a letter from Aunt Let tv. It was brief ami tn the point. She thought Vi was too young do be carrying on such a correspondence as she and Donny were doing. She thought it unfair that Vi should be in anv wav hound by a promise made as a mere child, and sin* wished Mr. Wilson to

ask Don a« a gentleman to stop writing, and leave the matter till Vi was of an age to choose with some knowledge. She van taking Vi away to Australia, and in two or three years* time would send her nddress to Don and allow him to write or call on them. Don was furious, but Mr Wilson pointed out that Aunt Letty was within her rights in her wishes, and perhaps after all it was unfair to a girl to hold her bound to a promise made as a child Don wrote a long letter to Aunt Letty alii another to Vi. Aunt Letty’s was unanswered. Vi’s •was placed in an envelope and returned 'unopened lie wrote again and again, begging to be allowed to write Vi twice a year—once a year—through Aunt Letty- anything. For months a dead silence met all his letters, Then at last one of them came back tn him. Tt bore postmarks and re directions, and was finally stamped by the Dead Letter Office with a blank •‘Gone, no address.*’ Then began a long and heart-breaking-ly unsuccessful search. Don sent a long Cable to the overseer in charge of his father’s place asking him to make inquiries. Within few days a terse (reply came back. Mr. Crichton had died bankrupt—all his money and more thaji 4 lie value of his farm having been lost In speculation. A big pastoral company nvas running the place, and from the time that Aunt Lottv had taken Vi away no trace could he found of her. Don devoted time and money—for he was wealthy, or his father was—to the pear-ch. ITe advertised, he used inquiry agents and private detectives, he came out to New Zealand and over to Aus’-

tralia, and back to London. But it was all in vain, and not a trace could be found of Vi. Seven years after Don was back in Australia, and was walking along a street by the park in Sydney when a big bunch of violets on a flower-seller’s basket caught his eye.. He crossed the road to buy them, but to his surprise the woman refused to sell. “I'm savin’.them for a young lady as is particularly fond of ’em,’ she explained- “ They’re the first of the season, an’ 1 knows how pleased she’ll be to get ’em.” Don held out half a crown. “She couldn't want them more than I do,” he said. “ I’m going back home to New Zealand to-morrow, and may not have a chance to get more.” The woman shook her head. “ I couldn’t, sir,” she said. “ The young lady has been good to me. She’s a nurse, an’ when my boy was in the ’ospital last year she looked after ’im like one o’ her own. All last season she bought a bunch o’ violets every day—calls ’em her Memory Flowers, an’ fair loves ’em. She’ll be’ along presently—there, she is coinin’ now.” Don waited in some curiosity to see this Memory Flower girl. He saw a slight figure in a nurse’s uniform, and as the girl came closer, and he saw her face, his heart leaped. When she came up he raised his hat and spoke to her. “I have been trying to tempt your woman to be false to you,” he said. “ I wanted those violets so much, but she would keep them for you.” The girl took the bunch from the woman with a glad little cry. “Ah,” she said, “if you knew how much they meant to me you would not have tried to deprive me of them.” “ They are a memory of the happiest days of my life,”

he said gravely. The girl looked closely at him with a puzzled little frown. “So they' are to me,” she said slowly. “How curious.” She undid the string round the bunch, and took out some of the flowers. *’ Will you take some, please?” she said. “ It would hurt Me to think anyone else wanted them as 1 do. and couldn’t have them.” Don took them. “May I walk across the park with you?” he said. “1 would like to tell you my memories, and perhaps we might exchange.” They turned into the park together, and walked in silence for a few moments. “Mine is rather a long story,” said Don. “Will you tell first?” “There is not much to tell,” said the girl; “only that they remind me of the days when I was a child, and of a boy who was my playmate. We were boy and girl sweethearts for years till he went away' with his people. My father died, and an aunt took me away, and brought me up. I have not seen him since.” “ But I —he wrote, surely,” said Don eagerly. “Why didn’t you write?” “Aunt and I were poor,” said the girl. “ She stopped our writing, and said we were poor now, and that Donny ” Don’s pulse stirred strangely at the sound of the name on those lips —“Donny might think he was bound by a promise made as a child. Then he stopped writing, and I thought Aunt might be right, and he had only cared as a boy cares. Aunt gave him the address that would, find us at the end of three years if he wanted to come. She died before then, but though T waited there, he never came; so of course he had forgotten. T took up nursina then, and—that is all, I think.” Don drew a

long breath. “Will you sit here a mo ment?” he said, jminting to a seat. “Did you ever think how it might have been if your aunt had never sent that address? Did you ever think that that boy might be searching the wide world for you and breaking his heart because he could not find you?” There was something in his face that made the girl turn quickly, and look at him. “What do you who arc you?” she Whispered, with wide eyes and slowly paling face. Don was taking a pocket book out and opening it with fingers that shook. “ Your little cave is still there,” he said. “ And the strea-m rippling over the stones. The old billy battered old spoons and cup still hang in their places on the wall. Nothing is changed—and, least of all, Donny’s love.” From the pocket book he took three dried-up, withered flowers. “Donny,” she said, with a catch in her voice, “ Oh, Donny.”