THE SUN TOWER

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume V, Issue 2, 1 November 1901, Page 127

THE SUN TOWER

■Hr lUmtratal by U. P. $<«/,/. m ' K1 p y cs ' IX(>(^ <in *' IC <■''•" Itli'o" of f " Ti'iu 1 , 0 jirojilici, ; it very sibyl (if the jampot. It's ja Titantic confection indeed, and nuilclicH Hio mighty coniigmation of Ola Gorjro. All tilings are gigantic lion;; I think my tsoiil must have grown cubits taller in the year I. have taught the young idea here. And Ido like big tilings." Hubert Torrance squared his Herculean nhoulders with half smile. "That is nice for the big things," he said, gently.

The girl flushed slightly

" I like Nature large ; I like mind large,

" she said with a grave, d<;ft reservatio.n

It was a curious gipsy idyl the jam making of Ota Gorge. An ul franco lire place had been placed in a corner of the large station garden — a delightful No Alan's Lund of broom and willows. The huge copper that held the steaming fruit, was not negotiable on any house fire. A tiny creeklet flowed silently over moss ; and the beaten .shaded grass betrayed where the strength of the household had mustered for the day-long fruit picking. Now the world's rose of sunset lay across the west. The robust Tolume of the sheai'ers' choruses softened as it floated across the drowsy golden gorso. Prom another quarter the sharp cries of the shed-filling smote the oar Hngingly, while the subtle mournfulness of the bleating of lambs ran like a charm through the air.

Mrs. Ross anxiously sought for yet other jars in the store. The plump Abigails, Maggie and Katie, were washing up. The young Rosses were tumbling precariously through certain compositions and French verbs in the schoolroom with the joy of a night's eeling in view. Thus it was that the Titantic confection had been left tc those willing volunteers, Miss Oliphant, the governess, and Mr. Torranco, the invalid journalist, who was the station's guest.

"This is the apotheosis of cookery," he said, baring a head still curly, though grizzled, to the coolness of the tiny nor' west wafts. " Hang civilization ! I'll chuck leader writing for Eden and jam making. Will you chock the young idea ?"

"It would please the young idea amazingly," cautiously replied Miss Oliphant, wiping a spot of froth off her hand. Her handkerchief dropped. He picked it up and calmly studied the corner. " I'm not a conventional man," he began. " I inferred that the night you came, when you patted Mrs. Ross on the shoulder and christened me Little Comedy." " Well, isn't a pat heartier than a frozen ■' thank you ' for a cup of good broth ? And you are the dead image of the girl in the picture of the Jessamy Bride. But to the point : will you allow me three guesses ■regarding this mysterious ' B ' ?" " Gruess then," said Miss Oliphant. "Blanche, Bessie, Beatrice?" he said with a rush. "Quite cold," laughed the girl. "Brenda, Bertha, Berenice?" more slowly. " Ice cold yet " " Beryl ?" A dead stop. " Floored, and a newspaper man ! No, it is a queer barbarous relic of old Border story— Bride!" " Bride Oliphant ! It's a poem." " A poem ? You don't know what schoolgirls are made of. My name was a •bitterness to me. First they used to stick 'bits of wilted syringa in my hair and throw dusty antimacassars over my head for wreath and veil. Then iv an evil hour the bookworm of the class discovered that Bride was the Scottish form of Bridget, and I -knew peace no more till I came to Ota •Gorge, and comfortably dropped the outlandish thing." " Well, I don't intend to compound the felony of hiding such a name — not when we are tete-a-tete at least. You don't mind ? I'm very uncivilized — a wild man of the woods. I'm very old — Methuselah Bedivivus " "Faust in the transformation," said Bride hastily, and bit her lip. "Do you want any more reasons, Little 'Comedy ?"

His voice had a deep soft inflection.

Bride flushed again

" I'm sick of reasons, that's why I am here," she said. "At the University it seemed all reasons, reasons, and the living things themselves seemed hidden in clouds of words. So I left the reasons for a little while, and came here to the Southern Alps to look for the things. And I have found them — grand, simple, satisfying." " Yes, I understand, little girl. You know your own, and your own knows you. You were homesick for your great kindred, the mountains and the mist." He smoothed the little handkerchief musingly. " Bride ! Fancy not knowing it all this time." " Whole ten days," smiled the girl. " Little Comedy, Little Comedy, do you think we did not meet long before in some wild other life ? Do you not think we shall meet long ages hence ? Ah, how little you remember. You are as forgetful as Evelyn Hope : — ' What, because I was thrice as old Each was naught to each, must I be told ? Worlds I must traverse not a few ; Much is to learn and much to forget Ere the time is come ' " He broke off with a little laugh, and jumped up. " Come, give me the jamstick. I have been doing the noble savage long enough, letting my womenkind work while I calmly contemplate my snug little Adam's estate of the earth." " But I prefer to keep the sceptre. You may make up the fire. Yonder are the logs. It isn't every day I have a leader of thought and Demos for a rouseabout." He obediently piled the wood under the copper. " Well, little sibyl, what do you see in the cauldron of destiny ?" he asked. " I see the storm in Macleod of Dare. I finished it this afternoon." Hubert Torrance rose, and took a few quick leonine strides with folded arms. " I can't read Macleod of Dare. I don't

see how any man with a live heart in him can read it. What had the girl done to be treated like that ?" Bride watched him with grave pleased eyes. " I am more callous than you," she said. " Macleod of Dare fills me with tears all the way from the heart to the eyes, but the tragedy does not strike me just that way. I hold a brief for all women who have ever suffered wrong, but I hold it about as limply

for Gertrude White

as for any

woman I

ever read of."

"But he

drowned

h e v— he

dvow n c d her like a

rat. Think

of it, Bride -the brutal, hulking cowardice

of it!"

Bride Oliphanfc's sibyl line eyes danced with glad-

ness

" I think, I think that

you are one of us," she said. " I think you are working for the Woman's Kingdom." " Did you think me as light as I look ? What else could I work for, seeing I am neither a man of stone nor a man of straw ? The salvation of the race is in your hands, wrapped up with your destiny. As I think I write. There is a pertinacious ' rag 'in the North that sticks to the woman's cause like a limpet, and trumpets for it like a lion. We won't say what humble animal fills the lion's skin " " Nor that ' the animal ' has lately gone into the fruit trade." Vol. V.— No. 2 —9.

" Nor that ho gets sheaves of letters from your leaders, who know their poor friend, and thank him far above his deserts." The sibylline look beautifully deepened. " I know now," she said slowly, " that it is because you infinitely understand the greater tragedy in Mncleod of Dare — and in life you so shudder at the lesser tragedy, the mere drowning of Gertrude. You know that all earthly suffering is relativo, and the murderer of murderers is he who kills the

B pi i' it, tho ideal. Aud tho Rolands are no t dead." Tli rough the fragrant steam there flashed an electric look. Thou the longs v it' c r i n g ja in boiled 0 v c r, a n d tho ul l erncss of tho moment wan dispelled inKtantly. "The ladle! the 1 a die! Q uick!" called

Bride Oliphani joyfully. " Stir now, and stir for your life !" She was deftly skimming the purplish froth into a basin, Scenting disaster from afar, Mrs. Kosh and the Abigails hurried up. Mr. Torranco was stirring to the imminent danger of tho bottom of the copper. " It's all right, Mrs. Koss," lie said. " We've had a little .Etna here, but the lava has ceased flowing." Immediately there was a clanking of jurs, and a calling for gardener and cowboy to lift the steaming vessel oil' the fire. " Come intr» the garden — Bride," said

Hubert in a penetrative aside. Silently they followed the mossy creeklct under the willows till they reached a gate. " Excelsior ! Let's get nearer the sunset," said Hubert, pointing to a steep face of rock almost overhanging the homestead. "Good," said Bride. "That is my •favourite climb. They call it Sebastopol Bluff." " We draw to the same things, dear child I love the blank Egyptian immensity of it," he said, quietly placing Bride's hand on his arm. " The way is steep. Lean hard, Little Comedy. I'm a firmer reed than I was ten days ago." Half way up they halted. "Lock, Bride, it is the afterglow," Hubert said. Far away the dream -soft pinnacles of the Southern Alps were melting into the rainbow deeps of the west. The treasures of rose and purple on the horizon cast a rich bronze reflection on the gray scarred face of Sebastopol Bluff, framed in the dead yellow, of summer tussock. Here and there at the edges a soft trail of woodbine covered a fissure ; close beside them a shrub or two trellised a pure, thin, starry tangle of native convolvulus. Hubert glanced at Bride's dark hair, and ;began twining the frail creeper. "I'm as bad as the schoolgirls every bit," lie said. * # * # # When Hubert and Bi'ide came down the lull, it was a new heaven and a new earth. " How strange it was that my little spirit compass, which always pointed to the Polaris of the right and the true before, went wrong the night you came. I got strangely disturbed and angry when you appeared, just as if an enemy came in sight. I don't know why." "Your compass was telling you that I was a fh'ebraud of a Socialist, a heterodox harum-scarum fellow, without a tremor regarding Mrs. Grundy, or an atom of creed-shell sticking on his back. No wonder your lily spirit shrank from such an one."

For all his light' air, he was watching her anxiously. But Bride only looked in his face with the glad incomprehension of love when the beloved object accuses itself. " Terrible, terrible ! Only — you are Roland, the Knight Errant." "A battered Knight Errant, Bride, with a goodly-scattering of the world's dust about his' ai'hiour." 'Having thus shriven sweetly and lightly as behoves a man to do, Hubert blew away many memories with a gay " Piff paff " of boyish content. "Now, Bride, haven't you got a swan's nest to show me this day of all days? You remember what little Ellie said : — ' And when soul-tied by one troth Unto him I will discoyer The swan's nest among the reeds.' " " Alas ! what can an Ellie who-has spent her life grubbing in a Christchurch lecture room know of such silvan treasures ? I did indeed know a black swan's nest on the Avon. But there was no esoteric charm, no sacred romance, about that nest ; every larrikin in town knew it, and throw stones at it when nobody was looking. But I make you a promise. If ever I learn it myself, I will disclose to you the mystery of the Sun Tower." " What, the place in Dunedin next your aunt's? — the turret where the two mysterious old ladies sit in the sun ?" " Yes. Auntie has broken the ice at last, and I am to be taken there when I go to Dunedin next week." "But you haven't long to spend doing Sherlock Holmes in Dunedin, remember. You're an orphan, so am I. "We need not consult; we need only announce, and what's the good of waiting?" Bride blushed and looked at her convolvulus chaplet. " Oh—Hubert ! They are dead already." "Plenty more on the hill," said Hubert Torrance. ***** It was a glorious day in March, and Dunedin shimmered in her beauty like a

queen upon her wedding day. High up in Roslyn a tiny villa stood. There was nothing notable about it save the single room that formed the second storey. The eastern wall of this room was one huge bow window with soft curtains falling from ceiling to floor. In this apartment which was furnished partly as a studio, partly as a parlour, sat two women. They were gentlewomen, as all could see. The elder was a prim, delicate-featured person of possibly fifty-five ; the younger, who seemed about forty, was all but beautiful ; the full lines of the statuesquo figure and the shapely profile being only discounted by the paleness of the face and dead listlessness of the eyes. " Look, Nell, how beautifully the sun shines on Pine Hill. Would you not like to go up the Leith Valley and see the new gardens ?" said the elder woman in a coaxing tone as to a child. Helen Renner shook her head, "0, no, Mai'y. The ship might come in and I should not be ready." " Won't you paint this afternoon, Nellie ?" asked Mary after a pause. "See, I have brought you up fresh asters and daisies." " Thank you, Mary. I cannot paint to-day." Nearly all Dunedin lay in full view at their feet as they sat in the window. The deep turquoise waters beyond St. Clair beat softly against White Island. Across the narrow neck the great ocean called to the calm harbour even as the Eternal Need of the world calls on the sleeping woman heart to break the bars of the ancient hills and go forth to save. Like the woman heart that is not ready to wake, the harbour lay smiling and land locked, rejoicing in the dark pines of the Peninsula, and in the little yachts going up and down like a flight of petrels at play. Above the Queen's Drive and the Maori Road was the grand gloom of Dunedin's lasting heritage, the deep clefts of virgin bush that bring the drip and moss of primeval romance to the very gate of the dusty market place. Across the busy joyous town the Northern Cemetery

looked to the Southern, as deep calls to deep, two fields of snow-white needles ever pointing to the skies from the heights of the North Bast Valley and Eglinton. A magnificent panorama indeed, but Mary Renner was not imaginative, and only sighed as she turned from the familial 1 scene to her needlework. A maid servant came to the door with a word. "Little Miss Oliphant is holow, the pretty girl whom you like. She may como up here?" " Yes," said Helen listlessly to Mary's question. Bride Oliphant stepped as lightly as a bird into the Sun Tower, where few but herself were ever admitted. Even Helen smiled on the sprite-like figure, and half rose to meet her. A faded photograph fell from her lap and lay face upward at Bride's feet. As she stooped hastily to pick it up, she gave a little cry. " What, you know him ?" she asked, unawares. It was as if a shell had burst in the quiet room. Helen snatched the picture back with a shriek, and ran downstairs. Mary recoiled a few steps with a face white as death, then followed her sister. When she returned Bride Was standing on the same spot, her eyes blazing with the quoKtions her tongue refused to utter. Mary spoke, lamely, unsteadily. " Mr. Torrance is — a friend of yours P M "He is coming to Dunedin next week to marry me." The clock on the mantel ticked ou like v death watch. They stood facing each other in silence. " If that is true, you have a right to know why my sister is not like other women," Mary said at last. Bride's fingers tightened on the chair she held by. "It was twenty years ago. We lived in Auckland, my mother and sisters and I. Helen was a young girl then. In Napier she met Hubert Torrance, and became engaged to him. He was in a lawyer's

office there ; he has been many things since ; he has never been faithful to anything or anybody in all his life. My sister's wedding day was fixed. His coming was delayed by business, he said ; he could not come till the very morning. We dressed her in her wedding dress — would it had been her winding sheet ! Hour after hour she stood, watching the harbour. But when the boat came in he was not there; there was nothing but a letter, false and fair as he well knew b.Qw to write. He prayed her to

pardon him, told her of his agonies of indecision, having seen at last the loveless abyss to which they were hastening, his sleepless nights, his resolve to choose the less of two evils for them both — ' his, his,' all the way through, not a word of her ! Bui; he did not speak of what we knew afterwards — the other woman. My sister was ill for many weeks ; her body recovered, but her mind died. Then we took her from Auckland, and brought her here. She will not live away from sight of the sea ; every day she looks for his ship and thinks he is coming to marry her. My mother

died ; my other sisters married ; we two live on as you see. Now, Miss Oliphant, you know all and are free to choose." " Have I any choice ?" asked Bride, with scarcely moving lips. Strong faith was characteristic of her, but now she never doubted her lover's guilt. Dimly she felt that she had dreamed it all before. Surely in the mystic subconsciousness she had always rightly interpreted those strange, daring, masterful ways that had charmed and angered her; she had always known

they were the ways of no loyal man. Little puzzlements about him, audacious admissions tliat fell without meaning on her infatuated ear, all returned and stung her. No ; this Sun Tower was the anteroom of grim Fate ; no false word could be spoken here. By and bye she would grow warm and angry ; to-day her heart could only freeze in a cold passion of shame to have loved and been loved by such a one.

Hubert Torrance had stood long in Knox Church waiting for his wife to be. It was strange, for Bride was the soul of punctuality.

But many things about Bride had been strange of late. The people in the pews fidgeted audibly. Some one at the door — the bride at last ! No, this solitary greyhaired lady could not be that. She walked firmly up the aisle to the bridegroom's side, and silently handed him a letter. He broke the cover, read four lines, and stared wildly at the messenger as if she were an apparition. He clung to his friend's arm, whispered a few words in his ear, and then the people knew that Knox Church would see no wedding that day. Locked in his own room, he read it to the bitter end. The boyish grace of the bridegroom had fallen from him ; he looked a stricken old man. The letter began without heading or address : — Helen Kenner's sister gives you this. As Helen Eenner waited vainly at the altar for you in Auckland, so you have waited vainly in Dunedin for Bride Oliphant. 0 man, did you think that the mills of God were grinding the wind ? I know the mystery of the Sun Tower now,

and share it with you as I promised. Helen Rentier lives there, dragging out a long life in death. In her madness she looks overy day eastward for her bridegroom's ship. She has looked for it for twenty yoars. Aa I -watched her there I thought of the grim donion'a joke of your anger with Keith Maoleod. True, you did not drown a woman ; you never, I Buppose, spoke a harsh word to a woman in your life. You only murdered Helen Eennor's mind. And yot Koith Macleod will rise up in judgment against you and the like of you. A grim demon's joko indeed that you are the champion of the Woman's Kingdom ! — you. whose whole life has been a war upon us with the little lying poisonod arrows of man's vanity ! For I have learned much of your past now, and understand at last — lato, but not too late. Hubert Torrance covered his eyes with his hands. Ho tried to see Helen Ronner sitting in the Sun Tower, but ho could only see Bride's sibylline face looking into tho cauldron at Ota Gorge. Then he looked np with a ghastly smile. " Heaven help the world !" he said. "The women are learning to be just."