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NPRING, the burning bush, the voice from heaven, had returned to earth. All along "the block women came outside after supper to talk to their men while they sprinkled the Erass or stooped over frail green plants in their gardens. The children ran in swift" silent herds playing hide and seek, with wild. sudden outbursts at each capture.
Bliss, who was watering the lawn, step- ped lightly on the tender, green grass that held the imprint of her feet if she came down hard. She stood under the broad catalpa, a green cave in daylight, a mysterious living cloud at night, and pressed her slender body against its living stem.
All the rowan trees in the parking strip before her house were full and overflowing. Such slender dark boles holding up the bounty of green. "Like small proud women with heavy, heavy hair." whispered, Eliss.
Everything turned into poetry this spring. She was like a cup filled to the brim. Was it because she was seventeen? Was it because she had let her hair grow? felt different with your hair long.
Του
Above the tiny roar of the hose and the children's voices, she could hear the carnival music. like a golden fire of sound across the mofs, Honky-tonk music from a calliope.in a cheaply gilded wagon at a tarnished street carnival. She'd seen it setting up its three tents half way downtown in a vacant double lot. The music beat in wares across the house tops. Her heart pounded as she turn- ed off the water and came up the steps.
Her mother sat rocking on the porch. straining her eres over a pair of socks she was daring.
"Mother," said the girl softly, “do you mind if I go down to see the carnival? It's not far down or Division. I can walk there easily.
**What carnival her mother asked, not. looking up.
we Naw
"Oh. Mother. you remember, them putting up tents this morning. It only costa a quarter.
But it'd be fun. I feel like
a carnival to-night."
"I don't like you to go alone. But Ted's going to a movie with his girl, and your father and I thought we'd drive out in the valley to buy some gladiolus bulbs. If you go, you won't stay late? Just go down for an hour."
"No I won't stay long."
The dress she had on was clean but that didn't matter. She wanted to pat on some- thing different and becoming. She slipped into a new green knitted dress with a short jacket. It made her someone unfamiliar and exciting. Some clothes were like that. It was lovely when they were. As she changed her dress she kept glancing at herself in the long mirror. She liked to look at herself. It was interesting to see what she looked like, to know what other people saw when they looked at her. "Do my eyes really look · that deep?" she wondered. "I wonder if people notice how thin my arms are and how bony my wrists. I like them bony, but I don't think other people do." She had to watch her arms sweep up and out as she That's the nice thing brushed her hair. about long hair. It looks pretty brushing it." At last she had it coiled in soft, szug While brown rolls at the back of her neck.
she stood close to the mirror, rubbing on lipstick, the low mean of the golden, insistent music ran through her heart.
She thought, "I could go get. Doris to come with me, but I don't think I will. I feel like going alone." When you went with someone else you had to talk and you were as young as they were. Sometimes it was fun to laugh and eat hot dogs with another. girl and have people turn around to smile at you. But not to-night.
She went to the door and looked out of. the little round window and saw only as interlacing of nodding green boughs and How feathery leaves. Her heart leaped. beautiful it was to look out upon green. She pretended it was a forest out the window and no steps or walks or streets. Everything was so beautiful. She went out and kissed her mother "gently because of it.
"Now don't stay late, Eliss. about your going places alone."
I' worry
"Oh, Mother. Don't be silly and worry all the time. Nothing could happen to any- body on a night like this."
She went swiftly down the street until she came to Division, & main thoroughfare. connecting the two parts of town that the river divides. She walked slowly here, watching the lines of cars streaming past, pouring their headlights upon the pale dusk. It was darker with the lights on.
These
THE CHINA MAIL THURSDAY SUPPLEMENT, JANUARY 7, 1937
DARK SPRING
cars, unknown and swift, fashing up and down the big hill, where were all the people What thrilling things would they going? do?
She wondered if the boy she saw that morning putting up tents would be there to-night. She remembered how he had looke ed up at her and smiled as she and ber mother walked past.
Cars were parked solidly for two blocks around the lot where the carnival was pitch- ed. The music was loud and wheezy, now. The crowds of people at the ticket office and along the midway stood in a nimbus of light and dust. It was the first carnival of the year and everyone had forgotten the last one of the past year enough to be excited about this.
Bliss paid her quarter at the tox office. The ticket seller smiled at her, hix cigarette » tilted in a long holder at a corner of his mouth. Hamburger stands. orange drink, and beer counters jostled the shooting gal- leries hung high with striped cheap blankets and fatuous Kewpie dolls with headdresses and bula skirts of dyed feathers. There was a side show with a spindly collection of worn Six out freaks that Bliss hurried past. Oriental dancers chewed gum and waved limp violet veils. Mechanically graceful, a woman trainer in grey tights edged with gold, and a military jacket and hat with a thin aigrette, cracked a whip at two paddy- footed lionesses with opal eyes. Miraculous- ly all this cheapness was strung upon the golden thread of the calliope music and the dark. soft night, the mesmerism of excite- ment, became enchantment.
Bliss saw the young man who had smiled at her that morning. He stood by a conces- sion where you threw rubber balls at revol- ving ducks, small and quick, with the blackest eyes. His profile made her think of a dagger, but it was his black, sort eyes that plunged into hers. As she came near be smiled and called to her. "Don't you want to try to hit a duck?"
fa
She shook her head, fushing. She stood in her new, green dress with her thin, young wrists and her mobile mouth, while this young, dark dagger of a boy looked at her. Her lips trembled into a confused satile, and her cheeks got red and hot.
Her smile emboldened the young man. "Oh. He went over to her and took her arm. come on, it won't hurt you. Just try once for luckTM
· “Oh, I couldn't,” she murmured, letting his determined hand guide her through the passing people.
"Yes you can, you've got both hands, haven't you? He was smiling into her averted face, dark and shadowy. She felt his smile like a soft cloud.
"I can't hit anything. Really I can't." she stammered.
"Here, try it once on me. I bet you'll -knock 'em all down.. Won't she, Jake? He said in his peculiar, low voice that cut under the jangle of noise about them.
The chance seller heard him and grin- ned. "Here," he said gruffly and tossed her a-rubber ball. She had to catch it, of course, and throw it at the ducks. The ball hit one, knocked it over. She couldn't keep from laughing, and returned the boy's smile. Then she started off through the crowd, but the boy followed and took her arm.
"Come on over here, they're dancing.in this tent." he murmured.
"Oh, no,” she protested.
He had the thickest eyelashes she'd ever seen on a man. They were so thick that they made a curved shadow on his cheek bones.
“Wouldn't you dance one dance with me?"
He danced in a shoddy dance-ball way' with jiggly broken steps and his hand and hers on his hip. The lesser element at high school dances danced that way.
The minute the music, stopped and the clapping began," she slipped outside the tent. He was.close behind her and his arm pinned her to his side. His smooth sharp face hovered over hers like a hawk's. She push- ed his arms down from her waist and twist- ed out of his hard grasp. Something she hadn't known existed in her hated him. It · hated her, too, because the wanted to go limp in his arms, wanted to submit to his hawklike insistence.
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She ran into the crowd going toward the gate and was lost. The boy looked after her with a funny, contemptuous smile which she didn't see.
Bliss walked home with fast, tense steps. She had had enough of the carnival Before her house standing dark and patient under the wide, hushed sky, she paused to finger the mountain ash blossoms by the steps. The night breathed quietly and the white blossoms gave out a sharp, sweet sigh. The sound of the calliope had ceased. His face had been smooth, dark and edged as a sword.
The next day was a dark spring Sunday with full green trees at the windows and little girls roller skating on the sidewalks. There was the coolest thing in the world coming in her open bedroom windows, a wind
She opened the book of Brooke's poems again, looked a long time at his picture, then "began to read aloud, softly" and tensely,
“Blow out, you bugles, over the vich dead, "There's none of these so lonely and poor of
old,
But dying, has made us rarer gifts than
gold
These laid the world away; poured out the
Tea
Sweet wine of youth, gaze up the years to be Of worth and joy, and that unhoped serene. That men call age; and those who would
have been,
Their sons, they 'gare, their immortality.
She turned back to his picture. "Their sons! He was so young. He wasn't even married yet. He wasn't even married!" Her mouth trembled and she flung herself on the bed and wept. And then her mother's voice called cheerily from the stairway, "Come and peel the potatoes. Honey, the roast's on."
Dinner lasted until late in the afternoon and after the dishes were done, Mr. Minor got out the car to drive them all to the air- port.
"If you don't mind. I'll stay home." Bliss said, watching her mother comb her thin, gray hair again.
"Sis, Dad may let us go up for an hour,” Ted boomed from the bathroom.
"To been up once. I have a book to anish for school"
"Well if you won't get lonesome.” wor- ried her mother.
Bliss only smiled and lay down on the bed, one slender warm arta across her eyes. “ She lay and listened to them all fussing around and finally going. When the car had gone, silence, holy and sweet, fell upon the house. Bliss lay suspended in quiet and the faint spicy smell of the lemon pudding.
She must have slept because when she opened her eyes the room was dark. It wasn't so dark outside. She put on ber white turtleneck sweater and walked up to the store for some candy. She came back
by Mary Brinker Post home and ate it sitting on the steps. When
with smell of rain in it. The sky looked full and black with that iraminence all day.
Bliss got up early and went alone to church. It was warm and dark, a cave, with candle flames going up straight, as a song. The smell of candle wax and communion wine was holy, moving. brought quick tears. The girl made her communion, going to the altar rail with the three faithful elderly ladies and a newly confirmed young boy, but she was alone. wrapped in loneliness as a Teil.
She walked home under an overcast sky. between the bright green lawns, She thought this windy dark day of spring more thrilling and expectant than any sunny. cloudless day. There was a Brightness high above in the farthest heavens like the blue beating of angels' wings about the throne..
The only person she met on the way was a boy who lived down the street, a friend of Ted's. He was coming from the direction of the chapel of St. Ignatius' College and he said. "Good morning," to her as they passed.
Her family was getting up lazily, Sunday morning disorder of papers and coffee cups hovering over the front rooms. They had never struck her before as quite so ordinary and spiritless. She looked at them as from afar, but clearly, as from a hilltop one sees the people in the valley just below. Ted's incredible, before-breakfast cigarette had -smelled up the whole place. Father sat crunching, toast and reading out load from the sports section, "I see Curly Jackson knocked out Bull Morgan in the sixth. Whadd'ye know, Ted?"
Her mother sat comfortable and placid in the midst of it, the sleeves of her lavender bathrobe spotted, her wispy hair streaming down her plump back. "There's toast in the oven, Sweetheart," she called. “and orange.. juice in the ice box. Come and sit berc by the register, it's kind of chilly in the house this morning."
"I don't care for any breakfast," Bliss answered, "I'm not a bit cold either."
She ran upstairs to her own room and lay on the bed, reading poetry until her mother called her to help get the big mid- afternoon orgy of roast, brown potatoes, enormous salads, chocolate cake and pudding that was their Sunday dinner. She dreamed over "When I am dead and over me bright April shakes down her rain-drenched hair-” Sara Teasdale was exquisite, exquisite. But it was Rupert Brooke, Rupert Erooke who died too young, that she loved. There was a wonderful picture of him in her collection of his poems, a sort of half-tortured, intense profile, with the light falling across his beautiful, strong forehead lifted in such gallant defiance of the world. She looked into his face, at the tenderness of his mouth and chin, his unhappy, fine eyes. *******
"Oh, why did you die, why did you die?” she whispered, trying to imagine war and a cause great enough to take young immortals and throw them down to death. But at least he had left something behind that was beautiful and good. If she were to die now, there would be nothing to show she had ever lived. She took out a brown notebook from her locked dresser drawer. and glanced through the scribbled pages with an expres sion of pain and disgust on her shadowy face. They're awful,” she cried out loud, bossing the notebook back and locking the „drawer
it was gone she sat with her arms clasped around her knees, looking at the green foun- -- tain of the weeping birch. There was 窳 sinell of wild roses, damp and secret in some tangle of bushes, coming in a sudden rich perfume. No carnival music rolled over the houses to-night, but from someone's radio there was the prance of a minuet, tiny and metallic on the taut strings of a quartet, coming like a faraway bright tinkle of silver," like a high shaking of stars, into the gather- ing evening
Poor Bliss, curled on the steps, her heart pierced by all these fatal lances. It was useless to try to fight the longing, the gnaw of sadness that has no name or cause and so is as sweet as delight or love. She must sit and sigh and gïve herself completely over.
Some one came up the walk between the mountain ash trees, calling deeply, “Ted, hi, Ted!"
He came forward and she saw that he was the boy she'd passed on her way from church, Ted's friend, Gay Kennedy.
"Ted's not here,” she said from her steps. ; He stopped to recognise her. "Oh, hello, Bliss. I didn't see you there at first, Ted's not here? I wanted to see him about playing tennis in the morning before school. D'ye think he could drag himself out to play at seven? Td call for him after Mass.” He stood, with one, foot on the lowest step, tall and slight, in tennis flannels and a white sleeveless awester...
"Did you play to-day?" she asked idly. "Tim Scott and I played a couple of the priests from the college."
"Are you going to St. Ignatius this year? I thought you started at the U." She had an instant vision of two priests she had seen walking in the college close in cassócks and....... birettas. Her imagination animated thei
suddenly into strange figures with tennis racquets thrust into their hands and cassocks fying
"I did start at the U. I was taking pre-medics, but old man depression “came aloag and then the folks kind of wanted me to go to the college anyway. I'm glad I changed.” He looked off across the lawn. There was something about his throat and chin seen from the side that reminded her of. Rupert Brooke. Something tragic
"Why are you glad?” she asked. How fine and strong the bones of his face were.
He looked back at her with sudden în tentness, and came and sat beside her on the steps, stretching his long, white legs down before him. He laced his fingers together and sat looking at them while he talked to her.
"Because it's changed my whole life. Bliss." he said in his low, masculine voice that was very, moving." “Tm a different per- But I don't suppose you can un- derstand it-lots of my friends can't.”-
son Dow.
"Why can't I understand?” she breath- cd. Here was someone, she felt vaguely, in some kind of inner turmoil, just as she was, and he didn't think she could understand.
Gay Kennedy looked at her over his shoulder. He saw her round, soft face and blurred features and the dark places where her eyes were. - "Perhaps you would. I don't know."
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"Tell me,” she said.
"I'm going to become à priest, Bliss,” he answered at last. He breathed very deeply and looked out into the night again.
"Oh. cried Bliss, "oh, Gay, how wonder- ful Her eyes were bright and wet and her voice trembled a little. She could feel the sorrow of the spring night fooding up in her again, over and over her heart,
“Do you think so. Eliss? Do you real- ly. He bent toward her, eager and in- credulous.
"Oh, yes." She had to put out her hand to touch his that lay on his knee. His hand caught hers and held it tight. "I saw you coming from Mass this morning, Gay, when I was going home from my church.”
"You go to church too? You under stand that, too, the secret necessary. . . .”
He bent his head and looked at her. "Why are you crying? Bliss--what a lovely name. Bliss.**
“I think it's wonderful for you to give up the world and become a priest, but it makes me sad, too. It's so strange, I've felt a sort of sadness all day, something I couldn't explain. Do you know. . .
His face with its beautiful, lifted fore- head, was turned to hers. He nodded and held her hand tighter.
"You mustn't be sad because I'm going to become a priest. It's the greatest thing I could do."
"I know it is, but I can't help being sad about it. Though I don't know why I should. Ive seen you with Ted a lot, but I've hardly ever spoken to you before." .
"I know. I don't know why I told you all this.”
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They looked into each other's faces and then Gay put his arm around her and kissed ber. She did not try to stop him She wat pressed against his breast and face, her arm- held tight to her side. Her heart hurt so she could have cried. She kissed his warm, liv- ing face and was lifted out of the world.
They sat for a while on the steps to- gether, but Bliss went in before the folks came back from their drive, because she couldn't bear to see any of them feeling the way she did Gay Kennedy went home and she-drifted upstairs and got into bed without turning on the lights
She thought of Gay and cried for s while, not trying to stop. Then she turned her pillow and lay with the night wind com- ing in from the open window onto her finched cheeks. After a while, she began to feel happy and she smiled in the dark. And sud- denly the rain broke out of the sky and pat- tered upon the screen. The kind, spring rain, so wet and good.
(THE END)