Branksome Hall - Slogan Yearbook (Toronto, Ontario Canada)

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The Branksome Slogan 19 even using all his strength and all his endurance. He gritted his teeth in desperation, and the scalding tears of impotent rage filled his eyes as he realized that he was helpless. The red mists threatened him again and he was sinking down and down into bottomless depths, with clouds of pain piling up on top of him ; he could do nothing. He heard a voice, a harsh frightened voice cry out in pain ; then the clouds could no longer be held off. They rolled inexorably over him. The moon rose over the little wood and shone down on the broken foliage and on the smashed and ru ined trees. The squirrel and the blackbird had fled, and there was no life in the wood; there was only death. The red-headed boy lay still, with all the pain gone from his face. Beside him, one anem.one remained, lifting her delicate head in the pale moonlight. The moon passed on, leaving the boy and t ie anemone alone in their glory. ANN MERRIMAN, Form V. The Case oF the Curious Conductor I first noticed her when I punched her ticket shortly after we left Toronto on the westbound train. She was at dinner in the restaurant car and seemed quite alone. She was a very ordinary looking woman, perhaps in her late thirties, sHghtly overweight, and dressed lavishly, but in remarkably poor taste. It must have been her first train trip, or, at any rate, her first one alone, for she was very self-conscious. When I passed through the diner again, the waiter had seated a young soldier at her table and she was grinning shyly across it at him. During the next three days I often saw them together. His seat was opposite hers, and I noticed particularly that while the young man talked long and vivaciously to her, except for an occasional shy remark, her face remained fixed in a frozen grin; her eyes never left his face. I never saw them after they left the train together at Vancouver, but I thought of them often. I have an insatiable curiosity about people. In fact, after half a lifetime of close contact with human nature, you find yourself noticing people and analysing them, wonder- ing about their complexes and their secrets. Then you begin consider- ing yourself quite a philosopher and amateur psychologist. Thus it was that I had to work out my own theories on human nature in my story of the woman with the frozen grin. The woman, I had decided, had grown up on a small farm. She

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18 The Branksome Slogan Man ' s Dominion Has Broken Nature ' s Social Union The dawn rose silvery over the httle wood. There was dew on every blade of grass and on every leaf. The rising sun turned the barks of the trees to a ruddy pink, and made the fragile heads of the anemones blush with its touch. A squirrel ran chattering up a tree to be answered in a joyous chorus by a blackbird high up in the branches. The very scent of the morning was alive; everything was young, and rejoiced that it was so. Soon there came a crashing in the undergrowth as of something heavy moving with difficulty. Then there was the tramp of feet and the breaking of branches. Many men poured into the little wood. They trampled on the anemones with their heavy boots, and never iio ' ticed that they had done so; they broke the young branches so that the sap ran out, and never saw What they had done. They too were young, but they had no time to rejoice; they broke branches wantonly and stared out into the distance with straining, anxious eyes. Soon the noises began again, — heavier, louder noises, as of thunder, making the leaves quiver and the squirrel scamper off, leav- ing the intruders in sole possession of the little wood. Then chaos broke. It broke with a resounding crash, which reverberated to the distant hills. All that morning the guns roared and bullets fell like hail around the little wood. The machine gun concealed there barked too and that peaceful scene was turned to one of pain and bloodshed and fear. A young boy, with the joy of living and fighting in his eyes, raced into the wood ; he was freckled, and his red hair stuck out in unruly tufts from under his tin hat, for he too was learning the business of war. On and on the battle raged all through that hot afternoon. Smoke covered the fields, covering the men who lay there — men who had been young and strong and healthy like the red-headed boy. But he was a boy no longer; pain and the sight of death had made a man of him. He was lying in the little wood now, with red hot pains coursing through his body. There were strange dots in front of his eyes — dots that would not remain in place. Now they loomed larger anil larger and seemed to be falling on him, oppressing him, threatening him. He fought against them and slowly, reluctantly, his will conquered; they were driven away and he could again see the tree above his head. He could not think clearly, but some animal instinct forced him to attempt to move. But even this w a,s too much for him; he could not do it,

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20 The Branksome Slogan was married at an early age to a much older man, a prosperous neigh- bouring farmer. She had led a lonely, hard-working life, for her husband was taciturn and miserly, and his temper did not improve throughout the long years of their marriage. He had died recently and she had inherited a few thousand dollars for which she had paid with the best years of her life. Now at last she was free to enjoy her- self. She bought a gaudy new wardrobe and a ticket to the West Coast. She had always wanted to travel and this would be her adventure. On the train she was instantly attracted to the kind young man who spoke pleasantly to her. Soon she was telling him all about herself . . . her lonely life, and her sudden new wealth with which she would now live comfortably. He was so sympathetic. They were engaged a very short time afterwards. In Vancouver they were married and lived quite happily — until her silly grin began to irritate him more and more, and her thrifty ness increasingly infuriated him. He used a hatchet and with one blow she was quite dead. The ending I worked out for the story shocked me. I was dis- gusted with my melodramatic imagination — for it was only imagina- tion that had prompted my inquisitive mind. I was infinitely more shocked some time later when I glanced through a Vancouver newspaper. The headlines, telling of a grue- some hatchet murder, blazed up at me. Underneath them was a picture, that of a familiar grinning woman. The article told of her unhappy marriage to an older man, a farmer in her neighbourhood, at whose recent death she had inherited a few thousand dollars. She had married a young soldier whom she had met on the westbound train, and had settled in Vaucouver . . . I realized doubly how poor my psychology had been . . . She had murdered her husband . . . with a hatchet! JEANNE ROSCOE, Form IV.