The Strange Attraction/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
I
I T was in high spirits that Valerie set off the next afternoon with Bob to walk to the coast. A heavy thunderstorm in the night had cleared the air and set the dust, and a breeze had swept the river and the town of the haze that had obscured them for over a week. As they went up Queen Street she looked curiously at the banks, the land offices, the law offices, the Native Land Court building and Roger Benton’s large general store all bunched together near River Street, and beyond them up the rise at the houses and gardens that made this the aristocratic thoroughfare.
She saw that the whole place was heat worn. The gardens and lawns were brown. The blistering sun had peeled the paint off the white walls. There were no large trees anywhere, but only shrubs to break the glare.
When they had gone by the last cottage and were surrounded by the stunted vegetation on the flat above Valerie stopped, looked back and drew a long breath. There was more of a view than she had imagined. She gazed away across the river, over the miles of flax and cabbage trees in the swamp at hills and valleys girdled about with shadows. There were hills and valleys to the south and hills and valleys to the north, all checkered with the shapes of the clouds that were trailing over the face of the sun. To the east and south she saw fields, the glow of grain, innumerable specs of sheep and cattle, the white spots of houses, the red roofs of barns, water towers, clumps of Scotch firs, green spots marking the sources of springs, all the signs of a prosperous land, but she liked better the uncertainty, the magic and mystery that the northern hills hid beneath their wealth of bush.
They turned their faces to the sea. They dropped into little dips and mounted little rises, alternately seeing and losing sight of the sand-dunes to the left of them and the reddish white cliffs to the right. There was not a sizable tree to be seen on this flatness set up between the river and the ocean till you came to the hills that rose suddenly out of it on the north. Nothing but pampas grass and fern and low scrub would grow on its niggardly soil.
They swung along happily, startling myriads of grasshoppers and small brown butterflies that lived in some miraculous manner upon the dead sticks. Soon it became harder to walk, and their feet sank in the heavy sand. And the air was now filled with the roar of the sea.
As they cleared a mound, all unexpectedly glory was spread about their feet. They stood at the head of an S-shaped ravine that cut into the coast-line, dividing a stretch of sand-hills from a stretch of cliffs. It was deep and green with forest trees fed from a spring that gushed out at its head to fall in a series of cataracts on to a shallow stony bed, and so out across the beach below. In layers between the dunes and the cliffs the gap was striped with low sand-banks, a bit of white beach, a narrow line of lazy surf and a stretch of azure sea. Coming to it thus across the miles of hot aridity, the gully was a wonder of coolness and vivid colour and sweet scents.
The road dipped suddenly and a turn showed them the first waterfall. Valerie was furious to see iron pipes leading from it.
“Of course they had to ruin it?” she exploded.
Further down the trees met above them and they seemed to have sunk deep into a green nest with the sound of the waves lowered to a whisper floating away over their heads.
“Oh, how I should love to have a tent down here and come to sleep. Who owns it?”
“Benton, of course. He owns almost everything about Dargaville.”
Round the next corner they saw through the trees a little way off a row of five small cottages. Anything that stood in rows annoyed Valerie.
“The fools,” she sneered. “Don’t they see enough of each other in the town? Good heavens! I hope we are not going to meet them all.”
“I’m afraid we are. They were gathered to meet me two weeks ago. But they mean to be kind.”
“Damn it, Bob, don’t talk such rot. If they had asked Miss Hands I might grant that, but you know perfectly well they don’t mean to be kind. I wouldn’t have come if I had thought twice. At least I’m not going to know here anybody I don’t want to know. I’m not going to waste time that way.”
Bob grinned. “This will make you madder still, they all think you and I are engaged.”
“Oh, hell, Bob, what does it matter what they think”
They found the adult population of the gully gathered on the Benton verandah and at the mere sight of them Valerie’s eyes glared.
“Now, Val,” whispered Bob, “do be decent. The poor devils didn’t make themselves.”
But it must be confessed that Valerie behaved badly. It was nothing to her that it was the inner circle of Dargaville that was lolling languidly there on deck chairs consumed with a curiosity it was trying not to show about the much talked of daughter of Davenport Carr. She knew well enough that it was only because Bob was a bishop’s son and she the privileged child of the most powerful family in the Remuera set that they were greeted with the effusive and deferential politeness that so irritated her. She was furious to think she would have to sit there with them when she craved to be on the beach.
And then she saw as she sat down that nearly every woman present looked as soon as she could at her left hand to see if there was an engagement ring upon it. The poor souls did not know it but that completed their utter nonentity as far as she was concerned. She did like Mrs. Benton, who was a very attractive woman, but she could not forgive her all in a minute for imposing the rest of Dargaville upon her. Bob did his level best to counteract the difficult atmosphere she created, and he was as thankful as she was when the visitors finally rose to go. They were no sooner away than the Benton children invaded the verandah, five of them, and Valerie instantly became another person.
“Would you like to come on the beach?” asked Marjorie, looking up at her confidently.
“Indeed I would. That is just what I have been wishing to do all the afternoon. I wonder why it is that children and dogs are the only things that ever know what I want.”
“Really, Val,” protested Bob indignantly.
She turned to Mrs. Benton with an irresistible smile and gesture. “Mrs. Benton, I’ve been abominably rude. But I may as well do it once and be done with it. I loathe social entertainment, and I haven’t fought my family for years on the subject to come here and begin all over again. Of course you have to be nice to everybody. That is the price you pay for being married to a parliamentary candidate. But I’m not, you see.” Mrs. Benton was soothed by something in those twinkling blue eyes, and though astonished was flattered at the implication that she was not damned with the rest.
Tommy Benton seized Valerie by the hand. “Do you like fires on the beach?” he asked.
“More than anything in the world,” she said warmly.
“Suppose we have a picnic tea,” suggested Roger.
“Oh, please do,” said Valerie, “if it will not be too much trouble.”
So she set off with him and the children, leaving Bob to help Mrs. Benton. Valerie got on well with Roger who was predisposed to like all women, especially the daring ones. As they reached the sand-hills she caught sight of a tent roof under the shade of trees against the cliffs to the right. It was well isolated from the rest of the camp.
“A tent,” she exclaimed, stopping suddenly. “Who lives in it?”
“It belongs to Barrington.”
“Barrington! What Barrington?” She tried to keep the astonishment she instantly felt out of her voice.
“Dane Barrington, the writer.” He looked curiously at her. “Do you know him?”
“I have not met him. I know his work, of course. And dad knows him. What is he doing here?”
“He lives here, that is, up the Wairoa. Has been up here about a year. Lives like a hermit.” He saw she was enormously interested.
But she said no more, and just then they came out upon the open beach. The ocean washed before them along an unbroken coast-line for more than fifty miles, and stretched away towards the Australian shore with the glitter of the afternoon sun still hot upon it. Valerie stretched out her arms and began to run and shout and gather firewood with the children. They had a fine pile by the time Mrs. Benton and Bob appeared with the baskets. Both Roger and his wife forgave her for the afternoon before the picnic meal was over. No parents could long have been annoyed with a girl who was so obviously delighted with their children. They both noticed that she paid very little attention to Bob.
As they walked back to the gully in the twilight Valerie’s mood changed again. She kept looking at the colours fading out of the sky, and when they turned in off the beach she glanced enviously at the tent snuggled there and now lit from within by the light of a lamp. She wanted to go and peep through the flap, wanted desperately to see the man who was wise enough to be alone there. But it was a stupid world. She could not follow all her impulses.
Roger Benton returned to Dargaville with her and Bob. While the two men talked business Valerie mooned along thinking her own thoughts. They left her at River Street to go to the office. She was in no mood to go inside. She wandered along the flat uninteresting road in the direction of Aratapu. She was not in the least ashamed of her rudeness of the afternoon. If she had been nice, she reflected, invitations to dinner would have been the result. In the end these people would have learned that she did not want to have anything to do with them. She cared nothing for the fact that the men she had met were her bosses on the paper. What they paid her for was her work, and she would show them she could do that. And she chuckled to think that because her father had lent them money they would have to take her as they found her.
And then there slipped into her mind the picture of the tent lit from within, and snuggled against the cliffs. She wondered if Dane Barrington ever came to the hotel.
II
Valerie had discovered the piano the day after her arrival, but it was not till two evenings after she had been to the coast that she had the leisure to try it. Nancy, her chambermaid, told her there was a sitting-room in front of the hotel.
“Nobody ever sits in it, miss,” she said.
It was a dreadful room, but like the dining-room it was to Valerie so ugly that it was funny. She went at once to the piano. It was a fairly good make and almost new, but it was out of tune and stiff for want of use. She wondered if Mac would mind her playing. As a compliment to him she began with Irish airs. Soon she heard the sounds of men’s voices below, beginning diffidently, and then ringing out till they filled the house with the roar of a strong masculine chorus. She gave them chantries and drinking songs, and found there was some response to all.
A little before nine o’clock a man of medium height and lazy grace, who was walking towards the hotel, paused to listen as lines from one of his favourite songs floated out to him. “Wrap me up in my old stable jacket, and say a poor buffer lies low, lies low.”
Dane Barrington had not heard that song for years. It gave a pleasant lift to his spirits which were sadly in need of elevation. He walked in and stood outside the bar door. Men were gathered there and half-way up the stairs.
“Who’s playing?” he asked someone.
“Dunno.”
The song ended and after a moment another tune began. An Englishman leaning against the post at the foot of the stairway started to hum it, but he could not remember the words. Moved by a sudden impulse Dane mounted a few steps and waited for Valerie to begin the air again. Then his voice rang out in a hushed silence, “Drink to me only with thine eyes,” and until he had finished the second verse there was not a sound in the house. There was a burst of applause and calls for more, but he shook his head, slipped down the stairs, and disappeared along the hall looking for Mac who was not about the bar.
Thrilled at the piano, and wondering who on earth had that tenor voice, Valerie had begun “Come into the Garden, Maud,” and was grievously disappointed that the voice did not go on. She played one more old English air, but the company below had drifted back to the bar, and having given it its entertainment she turned to Beethoven.
Dane found Mac in a private room with Doctor Steele and a government inspector.
“Who’s playing, Mac?” he asked.
“Miss Carr, I guess.”
“Who’s she?”
“Where the bloody hell have you been? Davenport Carr’s girl, you know. She’s come to the News.”
“Oh.” Dane sat down and ordered whisky.
“Have a game?” asked Mac.
“Yes, presently.” He held his head as if he were listening. Michael brought in the drinks. Dane’s attention wandered. He stood up.
“I say, that’s music. I want to listen to it for a while. I’ll be back.”
His desertion of them did not annoy or astonish the men left behind.
Dane went upstairs to Mac’s room which was next the sitting-room. He flung himself down on the big bed with his right arm across his eyes and lay still. He stayed there till Valerie stopped at ten o’clock. He heard her go off along the hall. He wondered if she were staying here. He wondered why on earth a daughter of Davenport Carr had come to Dargaville to go on the paper, to go on any paper anywhere when she could play like that. After a minute or two of speculation he got up and went downstairs.
It was not till the next day at lunch time that Valerie got a chance to ask Michael who the singer was, and if there was anyone in the place who could tune the piano.
That evening she went down to dinner ahead of Bob. They were under no obligation to eat at the same time. She was hardly seated when Mac entered the room and walked up to her table. It was the first time she had seen him at close range. She smiled up at him rather uncertainly. The hard light in his eyes did not change.
“Good-evening, Mr. MacAlarney,” she began tentatively.
“Mr. WHAT?” he roared.
Then her face broke into the smile that was the passkey to the hearts of all who saw it light up that way.
“Am I to call you Mac?”
“Well you bloody well do, don’t you?”
“It is easier,” she said lightly, not in the least disturbed by his superfluous word.
“You want the piano tuned?” he went on gruffly.
“Well, if I might pay ———”
“Damn the bloody expense. I’ll have it done if you want it.”
“You don’t mind my playing?”
“No. Play whenever you want to.” And without another word he turned and walked heavily off.
Valerie decided as she looked after him that though his manners might be a little unæsthetic she would not have any difficulty with his spirit.
She found him equally reasonable when she approached him on the subject of keeping a horse, which was to be her only luxury. She had already spoken to Roger Benton about one he was willing to sell.
Mac talked in staccato sentences guarding his words.
“You’d better graze it. Just give it a feed when you ride it. It can go in my paddock. Two bob a week. That’s my charge. Michael will fetch it when you want it. Or you can get it yourself. You can pay for feeds as you get ’em. Shilling a feed.”
“And if I’m out late may I put it in the stable myself without troubling anybody?”
“Any bloody time you want,” he said, relapsing into spontaneity.