An Emergency Call

by G. B. Lancaster

In the Down-Country

By G. B. LANCASTER

 

Editor’s Note.—This story of Mr. Lancaster’s, the first of several to appear in successive numbers of this magazine, introduces to the public a new and powerful author, whose field is a country hitherto almost unknown in fiction. They are tales of New Zealand sheep-shearers and cattlemen, for whose crude strength Mr. Lancaster has keen feeling, and whose tragic struggles among the hardships and the terrors of their wilderness solitude he describes with remarkable force and vividness.

 

“IT’LL be jest an or’nary sod wharè.”^[1]

“But you made it, dearest.”

“And you won’t have no folk anywheres near yer.”

“I’ll have you.”

“’Fraid I’m jest an or’nary sort of chap, Liza.”

Then she put her arms round him, and told him what he was among men, exactly as all lovers have told all lovers since love began. But Lavel drew her head back and looked at her, troubled, and marveling that so small and rare a thing could in sooth be his very own.

“Yer don’t know the life of a woman outback. Are yer sure yer won’t p’r’aps be sorry—after?”

“Not unless—you forget to love me.”

“Never. I’ll never do that, Liza.”

He kissed her as a man unaccustomed to tenderness, and went away to ride through the noise of the streets, through the silence of range and level and barren down to the home that he had built her. It stood on a new-leased government block, and Franklin had helped in the making, as Franklin had helped Lavel in all things since they two first were mates.

At earliest hearing Franklin had hated this unknown girl who was to break the tie between them.

In learning more he began to fear her. Liza was bred in the town, and nursed on the talk of the dressmaking rooms at a big shop. Lavel was bred in the back-country, and had taken his teaching from men in bush-town ships, and on the roads. The very trick-words of lip and brain which foreshadow the whole must of necessity be separate languages in the man and the woman. And this was but as the beginning. A man who would live on the land needs a helpmate in kind: sturdy, expecting little, ready always and uncomplainingly to bear up her end of the burden. And the burden will be heavy. Wherefore Franklin pulled his beard and growled while they wrought at the two-roomed wharè until it stood up in all its ugliness among the tussock hills.

“Gie her comforts for the Lord’s sake,” he said then. “A wife’s a cheepin’ thing else, an’ she’ll dither the life out o’ ye. But I jalouse she wull dae that onyways.”

And just then Liza, walking with a new consciousness among the workroom girls, blushed at their twitter of lace-trimmings and underskirts and all else that belongs by right to a bride, and thanked God dumbly for love.

But Franklin could not guess at this, and it was for Lavel’s sake alone that a sheet-iron lean-to was sloped to the hinder end of the wharè, and a handful of tiger-lilies stuck in a scarified patch of soil. Then Lavel rested from his labor in a florid content, saying:

“Reckon that’s good enough for the Princess o’ Wales. Now we’ll wade in at the fencin’, for I must hev the stockin’ done wi’ by next month. S’elp me bob, but it’s fair rotten to hev to take the inside o’ a week gittin’ spliced.”

It was into the golden land of love and desire that he brought Liza home through the sunsetting. For the scarped ranges and the marshes were passed and all the world lay forward in a broad flooded yellow on tussock slopes and plumes of waving snow-grass. The little squat wharè shared in the benediction, and a skylark sent them welcome down from God’s gate. Liza laid her cheek to the rough, unplaned door, and named her home “Heaven-on-Earth,” speaking very softly, yet not so softly but that Lavel heard.

“You’ve got some ratty ideas, old girl,” he said. But he put his arm about her closely as they went in together.

Franklin rode over on the Sunday. And he found that Lavel had married a child with a cotton frock and eyes made glorious by a something that he did not understand, and wrists no bigger than the waist of his thumb. Lavel showed them in half-pride and half-derision, and Liza’s sweet lip drooped.

“I can work,” she said eagerly. “Truly I can. I am so strong—and there is very much to do.”

“Aye,” said Franklin, looking down on her gravely. “There is much tae dae.”

“It is so wonderful that I should be allowed to help him.” This very shyly. “He is so good to me. You can never guess how good he is—for you are not his wife.”

“I’ve been regruttin’ that a’ these years,” said Franklin solemnly; “but, ye see, he didna ask me.”

Then they laughed together until Liza ran into the house in a small fury. But she waved a cup at them in forgiveness when they passed the kitchen window, and Franklin growled through his beard:

“She’s a bonny bit thing, Lavel mon. Think ye ye hae dune richt tae bring her oot tae this?”

“Pooh,” said Lavel, “she’ll be happy enough. A feller can’t make this sort of thing pay without a wife, you know. And she’s dead gone on me. Macklin sent over those Leicesters yesterday. Come along down to the paddock an' have a look at them.”

“Aye,” said Franklin, underbreath, “she’s a bonny bit thing, but I doot she’s the mate for ye, ma lad.”

For if Franklin knew the good in Lavel he knew distinctly the evil too.

There was a whole new life calling for Liza, and she went to the learning bravely. It was play at first, with Lavel to carry the heavy buckets and tins, and to help in the washing-up at nights. But this failed to attract him presently, and the outside work taxed his mental and physical strength, and began to rub his temper. Liza struggled over strange dishes that Lavel refused to eat, and learnt to milk the cows, and feed the pigs, and to fill the kettles without flooding the stove-place. For the work of a woman on the land is always that of a man. It tried her severely; and the long evenings that closed the hard days were cruelly dull, with Lavel falling asleep over his pipe, and the clucking wind arguing through the door-latch with the busy clock on the mantel-shelf.

It was in the fourth week that she first spoke to him in anger. It was in the seventh week that he first swore at her. They made that up; he with uncouth regret, she with tears that washed some of the gold out of life for always.

Then Franklin came. He noticed the swelled eyelids, and the loss of spring in the little thin figure; and he called Lavel to account sharply, even savagely, down by the pigsties among the manuka. Lavel’s low brows met in a scowl.

“She played up, an’ I guv it to her straight. An’ I’ll do it agin when she wants it. Don’t you come gassin’ about my business that way, Franklin, for I’m blowed if I’ll stand it”

And by this it was intimated that Lavel was ashamed, and afraid to show it.

This was a strait life for the two out on the tussock hills, and one that demanded and took all they could give. But they gave apart, not knowing, and this was unwise, for it hurt both more than was necessary.

Liza lost flesh and spirit, and the loneliness of the many hours ate into her like a canker. Lavel tramped at the plow-tail, flayed his fingers over the straining of wires, sunk post-holes, and built hurdles. And the eternal dread that sufficient money might not always be forthcoming kept him awake through the nights.

Franklin came very often, for Lavel wearied for one of his kind to speak with. He forgot that the only woman within twenty miles lived at the end of a bridle-track, and Liza could not ride. He forgot, also, the little tender pettings that a woman craves; and so it came about that Liza broke her heart daily, never guessing that Lavel was hiding from her all that he considered a man’s trouble. She did not know of the seed-land that had gone before the wind even to the bottom of the plowing, of the cattle that broke out and died of tutu down on the river-bed, of the merinos that got foot-rot in the swamp. But the constant pressing of this burden weighted Lavel beyond his strength, and, being quite a ordinary man, be made himself consistently objectionable in consequence.

Liza had learned little refinements in the workrooms; and so it fell that by degrees the filthiness of the cow-house in rain, the smell of Lavel’s boots when he came from the yards, even the hang of his coat on the shoulders that were growing bowed, were of offense to her. The tussock that blew to west, to east, to southward on the bleak hills was a thing, merciless and all-abiding, to hold her from the life she had known and loved.

It was before Franklin one day that Lavel railed unguarded because Liza had forgotten to feed the calf. And that Franklin, awkward and troubled, should plead for her clumsily, was gall beyond anything that Liza had been called to bear yet.

“He’s quite right,” she said, with her head up. “I didn’t ought to forget.”

Then she went out, and beat her hands wildly on the staring blank wall that she had named “Heaven-on-Earth,” and cast herself down in the hollow of the manuka hill with all love shaken out of her by that struggle against the unalterable which comes to most men and women soon or late, and which—while it lasts—makes life rather more terrible than it is meant to be.

Franklin was fighting a devil on his own account these days, and his pipe lost flavor. The changes that flecked Liza’s voice; the scent she always used; the quaint upstanding wave of hair on the left temple—over well he knew them. But belief in his strength of will drove him back to her week by week, until autumn chilled to winter with threatening of the snow that would presently cut the sod wharè off from all the world. Then it would be that Lavel and Liza must go back to the state of the first man and his wife, with none to come between. Franklin feared what this might mean when he rode through the bleak wind one Sunday and found Liza alone by the fire.

“I’ll make you some tea,” she said dully. “George is out round the sheep. He won’t be in for hours, I expect.”

She moved through the room that she had made dainty with sewed curtains, and shining tinware, and books; and Franklin watched her under his hand.

“Ye’re lukin’ fair an’ peeked, lassie. This weather no suits ye, maybe?”

“It’s not the weather,” said Liza, and laughed uncertainly. For her nerves were on tension beyond her knowing.

She moved the kettle in the red of the firelight, and Franklin cried out at the shapely seamstress’s fingers that were chapped to bleeding and blackened with work.

“Eh, lassie! What hae ye dune tae yer honds? Swelled an’ bluidy—the saft bit fingers! Ye’ll no’ be pullin’ aff that ring the noo.”

“No, I suppose not,” she said. And then constraint fell from her.

“Why did you tell me that? Do you think I don’t know? Do you think I don’t know I can’t pull it off? Never! Never! So long as we both shall live. O God, I can’t bear it! What shall I do? What shall I do?”

She clung with both hands to the breast of his coat, and in the mad words that she said Franklin fancied she was stripping her whole soul bare to him. The quick tones carried him down on the rush, and the nearness of her piteous mouth was more torture than is healthful for any man.

“You were his mate once. Was ever he cruel to you? But I am his wife. He can do what he likes to me. Oh! if you had a wife, would you hit her—and call her names——?”

“What? Na—he wudna strike ye.”

“He did! He did! Twice. Once I left the gate open and boxed some sheep. Once I was tired, and answered him back. And he’ll do it again. I know he will. Oh! why doesn’t he love me as he used to?”

This should have cleared the position to Franklin’s understanding. It did not, for other forces were at work.

“Take me away.” This was not any more Liza, the dressmaker, with her careful mannerisms, but a woman caught in a power too strong for her. “I’ll kill him if I stop here. I’m learnin’ to hate him now. Oh, if you care for me, take me away!”

“If I care!” He kept his eyes from her because that touch on his breast was quite all that he could bear. “Fine ye ken that I care. Tak’ yer bit honds aff me, lassie, or I’ll be showin’ ye that I—care tae much.”

“Do you? Do you care? He doesn’t. He never will. Every day and every night I know that he never will. If I could die——”

“God hae maircy—ma lassie—ma ain lassie! What can I dae? What can I dae?”

Liza had whipped herself into pure madness. And because Franklin did not know that the mood would pass, his thews were being tested severely.

“Take me away! Take me where he can’t find me! You’re strong. You wouldn’t let him have me back——”

“He’s ma mate. He is ma mate, I tell ye. I canna dae him wrang. Ye dinna ken what ye say. He is ma mate.”

“Don’t I know? Don’t I?” Her hands gripped him closer. “Oh, don’t let us be shut up here together—just him an’ me!”

Franklin cried out inarticulately, and almost his strength went from him. But he did not move. He stared blindly at the wall, and two memories came to him in great lightning flashes: Lavel standing just there with a dripping brush, his eager face and fair hair all splattered with whitewash; Lavel, in pride and a half-comic tenderness, arranging the next room, and puzzling over the hang of a curtain. He pushed Liza away.

“Dinna tempt me,” he said. “For the luve o’ God, dinna tempt me! He’s hurtin’ ye sair, an’ I luve ye abune a’. But I canna help ye. I canna.”

He dropped his head on the mantel-shelf, and groaned like a wounded elephant; and presently he heard her crying, as a man cries, in great dry sobs that shake the soul.

He swung round.

“Liza!” he said, and put his honor behind him when he crossed the room to take her up in his arms.

Through the window above her bent head he saw Lavel riding home across the snow-grass, and his hands fell away as they touched her. There was a silence that drew together all known agony for one man; but Franklin’s voice was quite level when he spoke.

“Rise ye oop, lassie. Here’s yer mon come hame. He does luve ye richt weel, though I’ll no’ say he’s ower gleg in the showrin’ o’t. But he has a mony things tae trouble him, an’ ye maun forgie, an’ luve him yet. Ye air ay the ane lassie for him. I’ll no’ wait tae see him, I’m thinkin’. Gude-by—Liza.”

Out in the windy dusk he twisted in the saddle, looking back to the four-square hut with its litter of yards and straw-thatched sheds. Past the wire fence running down where the young trees bent from the south he saw Lavel go in and shut the house door behind. Then he turned, pressing his eyes with his hands, and his horse went home unguided.

He carried a very complete heartache north with him that week, forgetting Liza every hour of the twenty-four because it was his duty, and rolling on his bed of nights in a cold fear lest Liza had run away from Lavel into the show of the ranges.

In the late autumn the will of the man he served sent him again to the down-country. He came with a draft of cattle, and at one of the stages they told him to make Lavel’s stock-yards at the day’s ending. He had not heard Lavel’s name since he took that old trail last year, but his tongue dried in his mouth when he would have asked concerning Lavel’s belongings. And through the long day that brought him over the last hill at sunset it is probable that Franklin paid fully for the sin of loving without the law.

The wharè, and the young trees, and the slip-rails where the cows stood lowing were swamped in the blood-red that ran out of the western sky. The window-panes flared blank, and the awful restlessness of that love which may not be satisfied made the work of rounding and yarding the mob sheer torture.

Lavel came out before the last rails were up. He was unskilful of words as in other days, but he shook hands with a mate’s grip.

“It’s good ter see yer agin, old man,” he said. “Come along in.”

Franklin followed, in deadly terror because the fear that had tortured him so long was come to the clearing. He uncovered on the threshold, and his eyes saw black. Was she there? Liza—Liza—Lavel pushed open the door of the inner room, and crossed the sill. Franklin stood still; the passion in him shook him by waves, and his throat ached. Then it came to him like the blare of a trumpet that sin, honor, blood-brotherhood between man and man are nothing beside the love of a man for a woman. He had left her—but he had come back. It was Lavel speaking behind the half-closed door, but Franklin heard only the answer.

“Franklin? Why, I thought—ah, George, just see how he’s curling up his little toes! The darling—darling!”

“Hillo, sonny! Hillo; hillo! Scratch us up a good tea, Liz, will you? An’ gimme the kid. I want ter show——”

“George! Don’t you dare take him till I get some more clothes on to him! He’d catch his death! What? Yes, I’ve got plenty for tea, dear, and if it’s good enough for you it’s good enough for Franklin. Lo! He can almost pull my hair! Oh, baby—baby——!”

“And we can put him up for the night, old girl? Franklin——”

“Oh, bother Franklin!” said Liza. “All right, dear; yes, if you want him. There! go to your daddy, my sweetheart. Keep the shawl well round his head, George, and don’t let the light get in his eyes. Tell Franklin I’ll be out in a minute.”

And Lavel went back to tell it.

1. A Maori house.