Tussock Land; a Romance of New Zealand and the Commonwealth/Chapter 13
XIII
They met at Caversham at the tram terminus. As King alighted from the tram Aroha ran forward to meet him. She had been saying over and over to herself all the way that she would be restrained and commendably undemonstrative. He would never guess.
But at the sight of him—he had grown taller, but his face was too thin—at the sight of her fairy prince, all the hastily-erected barriers had gone to ruin, and she had taken his hand impulsively in both of hers.
Instinctively King glanced round to see if people were looking. Only for one moment, however; the next he was saying gladly, “Aroha! Aroha!”
He was sincere in his gladness now. He was but a boy, a dozen personalities fluid yet within him, each potentially himself, none ever stable. Keenly sensitive, swayed by his dissonant moods, he never knew in which of his selfs—the ambitious, the self-confident, the weak, the despairing, the impetuous, the sane, the gauche, the heroic—was embodied the real ego. Within his mind a flood of personalities succeeded each other in a bewildering riot of surprises. He was capable of much heroism, of many meannesses. Remember he was young.
They turned to walk together up the steep, hillside track. It zig-zagged up the gully between a lane of little houses that either perched high on the steep bank above the road or peered quaintly up at it from the slope below. Above lay a little patch of native bush, dense and blue and cool. Below as they slowly mounted, lay the wide stretch of Caversham, overbuilt with small cottages, the ozone-swept East-End of this metropolis of the South, and further away a line of yellow sandhills edged the limitless blue sweep of the Pacific. From the beach the long rollers boomed with a muffled thunder. It was a dreamy afternoon in December, when all the land drowsed beneath the mellow heat of summer.
They talked little at first, shyly wondering over each other. King noticed with a glad surprise that the lack of taste, the glaring crudities of colour that had so smitten his eye at the station, were not noticeably apparent now. She was not well-dressed, but her dark green coat and skirt and her black hat infinitely became her. Here—in this lane—dress did not matter so much; she seemed at peace with her environment. And she was very beautiful. As they slowly sauntered he looked again and again at her with a new and growing delight. She had grown wondrously beautiful. Why had he not seen it at the railway station? Why had he not spoken to her then? Was he himself at all at the station? Last night had not some malign devil taken possession of him? What a fool he had been, and how near he had come to inflicting upon this dear friend a fatal hurt.
She asked him of his plans. He had much to tell, and was flushed with ambition and self-confidence. He would succeed—of that his soul was assured; but it would mean hard work, continuous study. He hoped to support himself by black-and-white in Sydney, perhaps he would even get some drawings accepted by the Bulletin. His father had given him a little money, sufficient to keep him for six months; after that he would have to depend upon himself. His thought leapt quickly and easily past these drear realities; already he was a successful artist whose work was the wonder of Australia.
“And after that?” asked the girl. “After you’ve become a great artist in Sydney and people can’t buy enough of your pictures, you’ll come back?”
“Come back?” King was genuinely surprised. “What for? I’ve nothing to hold me to this country.”
The brutal nakedness of the word hurt Aroha.
“Nothing?” she echoed drearily. Then with a brave laugh she said, “Why, isn’t it New Zealand?”
But New Zealand meant nothing to him then. To her the name was like a mother’s voice. He would have to go out into the world to learn how Maoriland called her banished sons to her.
“Sydney is only a halting place for me, on the road to Paris.” He named the city with almost a reverence. “Paris! Why, how can anyone paint outside Paris and Rome? We have no atmosphere here in the South. We can only dimly dream of the glamour that broods over old cities. Everything is so new here, so bare, so barren of any beauty but the mere sharp, vivid beauty of its own. But think of Europe and her halo of association, her aureole of tradition! Here we see everything in its pitiless nakedness; it is beauty stripped nude. There is no haze over the colonies; how can we wonder or dream?
“Then think of the wonder of medieval cities, the gloom of grey cathedrals! The splendour of ruins, the beauty that hovers about everything that has grown old! And then England, with its green grass and its lichened walls! And oh, Aroha think of the stately, wide-spreading trees!”
“We’ve our own beautiful trees here,” the girl broke in, keenly on the defensive. “Look at our rimus with their tassels of red, the big black-pines that are left when the bush is cleared, the green, green ngaio trees, the crooked, decrepit old broadleafs, and the glistening, crinkly-leafed, chubby matipo, and—oh! hundreds more. And the white pine forests, with their tall thin trunks standing stiffly up row after row!”
“That is it,” said King. “Our trees don’t spread; they’ve no room for branches; they’re too eagerly reaching up to the air to bother about spreading wide, too crowded by the other trees to elbow them out. I love those rows and rows of branchless pillars of pine and beech; a cathedral must be something like that, I often think.”
“And our Tasmanian blue-gums,” said the girl, “Aren’t they beautiful? Look at that plantation against the hillside. How stately, how proudly they stand, ragged and thin and dark, glittering with the cold blue lustre of things of steel!”
“But they are eternally the same. Can you imagine, Aroha, a forest of thin, sooty-black twigs against a wintry sky? And all the changing dresses Nature gives the English trees? Oh, how I remember the sudden wonder of the English spring!”
The boy was leaning back against the fence. He had lost himself. The girl saw the artist in him, clear glowing in his handsome face. She loved him.
And she leaned closer to him, every fibre of her being yearning for his touch, passionately craving to communicate to him that thrill of adoration that went through her. Her hand fell lightly on his sleeve, and her eyes watched him warily to see if he noticed the audacity. He did not stir.
“So you’ll go away?” she said, “you’ll always go away—further and further away? You’ll never come back?”
In spite of her self-control Aroha felt that her question was almost an entreaty. The girl’s voice tugged at some vague memory within King. He turned to her.
“Oh, when I’ve made a name, perhaps, I’ll come back. But not from Sydney; to come back from there would be an acknowledgment of defeat. I couldn’t risk that. I am not strong enough to admit failure. And to stay in New Zealand would be to give up all hope of ever becoming an artist. There is much to paint in New Zealand. I should like to return and paint it; but I should have to learn how to do it first, and I could never do that by remaining shut up in a forgotten place like New Zealand.”
And as he spoke it came slowly to the girl’s comprehension that in all his dreams she had no part. He had thrust her out of his life. He had forgotten that he had ever opened the door to her. But that was not the worst; she had been prepared for that; but he had shut her out of his future. He was to go alone—he and his art. And not for the first time in the world’s history a keen pang of insensate jealousy for that soulless seducer of men’s hearts—Art—entered a woman’s breast. Was he to go away, serene with her triumphant rival, without a word?
“King,” she said softly, “those were happy days among the hills!”
The girl’s voice shook him. “Yes,” he said, “happy times; but they’re all over now. If I could go back again it would be impossible for us to return to our old selves. We have both changed, grown other. Those two who met high on the ridge were two different selves; they don’t exist, not even in ourselves, any longer; they are dead.”
“No, no!” cried the girl, in a sudden fear, “they live!”
“Yes, they live, Aroha; but they’ve grown up, haven’t they? They’ve grown matter-of-fact and prosaic and sane. No, Aroha, there are no more holidays for me. I’ve got my work to do. I must put everything else aside!”
He was fighting himself, he knew. Here was the turning-point. His art called him on, and ever on. And yet he could love Aroha, perhaps he loved her now. But he had thought it all out—it was all so easy to think out when she was away—and he had decided that he must put her out of his life. If he were chained to her, he would be chained to New Zealand. He would come back and end it all here, in this forgotten corner of the globe. No; he must set his face ahead, and close his heart.
So, many times in his solitude, he had said “Good-bye” to Aroha, had argued with himself with much cunning, and convinced himself that he did not care at all for her. He had told himself again and again that that dream on the hills did not count; it had been too wonderful to be true. He must forget; life demanded that of him. Dowered as he was with a great talent, it was his duty to throw aside the obstacles chance had put in his way. He must go unfettered. So in his heart he had said “Good-bye” to Aroha, had said it with an ease that was almost graceful. In fact, he had been a little discouraged to find how easy—in Aroha’s absence—it had been to send her packing. He felt ashamed of his lack of fervour. But the thing had to be done, and he did it thoroughly.
But now . . . . He turned to look at her. Fool! he had imagined he had thrust her away, and she was here, close, close to his heart! Nay, she was in his heart, part of himself. To push her away now would be to tear a jagged, bleeding rent in himself.
She was indeed very beautiful. His eye ran over her supple slimness with a sensuous artist-joy. She was so breathing with youth; her mere presence passionately called him. The sweep of limb and bosom filled him with a faintness of desire. In her dark eyes he saw a great exaltation of emotion. Her face challenged him. Sex called imperiously to sex. Here was no ethereal spirit of the hills; here was a woman mature.
She put her hand blindly out to him; he caught it in eager fingers. Her face was dangerously near.
“Oh, will you go away and—and end it all?” she said, almost with a sob. It was the first time that King had ever felt tears in a woman’s voice. His fingers tightened on her hand.
“King, it was all so perfect, and now—now you will go away and leave us—leave me out of your life. King, I cannot bear to let you go!”
He drew her unresisting to him. He crushed her in his arms. He felt the world melt away. The blood hummed in his ears. He felt deafened, dazed within this stupendous whirlpool of emotions.
“Aroha!” he said, and as he spoke he knew he was casting away the future. He was drifting, drifting down some unseen stream, that would inevitably carry him into regions terrible and strange. But he recked not. It was enough to feel Aroha’s heart throbbing against his breast, to see the splendour that shone in Aroha’s eyes.
“Aroha, I love you!”
The words sang in the girl’s incredulous heart. All the world was a pæan.
She lifted her enthralled, exultant face to his. He kissed her hungrily, till, with a sigh of utter content, she drew her face from his and laid her forehead upon his breast. He kissed her hair.
“And I love you,” she said in a low voice, dwelling long on the dear words. She had said them over so often in her heart that she listened in a perilous ecstasy to their sound upon her lips. She felt like a novice profaning a shrine.
“I have loved you always,” she breathed.
King was stirred by a keen sense of envy. He had not loved her—of that he was sure—until the revelation had come at her touch. But it was all different now; his career, his art....
His arms relaxed. The girl almost shuddered, and looked swiftly up.
“Are you sorry you told me?” she laughed. “You have me now, and nothing—nothing you do or say—can take me from you! And yet—I can tell you now, I must tell you now, for you will understand—and yet, I have often wondered, dear love, whether you really did care for me—love me. I doubted you, oh, so often! And I was wrong all the time. Why, when I arrived last night at Dunedin, I looked for you at the station—”
“Yes, I know,” put in King, hurriedly. “I couldn’t get there in time to meet the train, because of my university classes.”
The girl shrank back.
“Oh!” she said, and there was an utter despair in her voice, “I did hope you wouldn’t say that! You were there! I saw you!”
The man released her silently from his arms. He remembered how he had joined in Caldecott’s sneer at her rusticity. And now—now he loved her! He loved this mere country-girl, meant to take her for his wife.
And then came a perverse vision—for this was one of those inevitable pauses of passion, the ebb of that great flood, and he plumbed undreamt-of depths. So came this perverse vision of the wife he had ever dreamed of—a woman of refinement, of exquisite taste, a delicate being whose personality was ever in tune with his changing moods, a being that was a harp swept by the winds of life, the fastidiously-chosen companion of his dreams, the divine consort of his art.
And his glance fell with a terrible naked directness upon the girl at his side. This was his choice; this was the woman whom he had woven into his life, the woof of which was his art. Her arms had fallen to her side with a helpless gesture, and he noticed her hands firm and strong, her sturdy finger-tips, so unlike the delicate tapering delicacy of his own. Oh, she would tie him down, come between him and his art! He was not meant to mate like this—perhaps not meant to mate at all. His art would brook no rival; his work called him on; he must fix his eyes ahead. This girl could never consent to take her rival’s hand.
Aroha had moved away and was standing beneath one of the long row of blue-gums that stood like a regiment of ragged soldiers against the sky. He noted the tired grace of her pose. He moved toward her, and saw that her eyes did not see. She was looking out across the hillside, crying miserably.
In a moment he was all pity. His arms went round her. He had hurt her, oh, so wantonly!
But she shook herself from him.
“No,” she said wearily, “you would not recognise me at the station. I told myself all last night that it was a mistake, that you hadn’t seen me. And I cried for hours—and it is not often I cry. You were ashamed of me, King; you were ashamed of me.”
King fell drearily back upon the truth. “Yes, that’s it, I suppose. But now,” he went on eagerly, “now it is all right, because I love you. Aroha, I love you.”
“No,” she said, and he noticed how she straightened herself. “I think you have made a mistake. I think we have both made a mistake. Love is not like that. Love is not ashamed. I don’t think you do love me yet. Yes, you think you do, King, but I know—a woman always knows. I think we had better forget to-day, King. Let us drop it out of our lives. You could not have loved me if you were ashamed of me. And if you were ashamed of me yesterday, you will be again. For, King, I feel I am not worthy to be your wife; you are to be a great artist, and I—I could not help you in your life-task. I am only a woman; and dear, I love you too much to let you ever be ashamed of me. I would only hinder you. And—forgive me, dearest—I could not want to be beloved by a man who could deny me like that. I am very proud, King—every woman is very proud when a man speaks of love—and I want to be loved utterly. Any other kind of love I do not want. I think I am very fastidious in love. You have your work to think of, dear, and after that, perhaps, you will think of me. But I would even be jealous of your art. Is art such a great thing, after all? Is it of greater worth than a woman’s love, King? I want to be loved alone, just because I am I. Dear love, could you give me that sort of love?”
A new hope burned on her face. Then the light died out of her dark eyes. She had seen.
“I don’t know,” said the boy at last, worn out by the conflict. “I don’t understand; I did not think love was like that. All I know is this, that I want you, dearest, in my arms. I want you for ever for my wife.”
A great compassion stirred in the girl’s breast for the boy who was yet in the struggle of life, who did not see clear, who did not comprehend the great thing called love. It seemed to her that when her heart became assured of her love for King she had come suddenly out of a dark tunnel; and about her, splendid and vivid, shone the eternal day. And he was still in the night! She said to herself softly, “And yet he could be ashamed of me!”
King stared miserably away. What could he do or say? He felt he must have time to think things out. He was in a whirlpool of conflicting desires, helpless. He moved to her and put his arm on her shoulder.
She smiled drearily and shook her head.
“That won’t help, will it?” she said.
But the next moment she had flung herself into his arms, and was crying, crying. Her sobs seemed to King the most terrible sound he had ever heard. All the despair of hell was in them. He stroked her hair weakly. They clung together in a common helplessness, uncomprehending, blind—the man, too selfish to know the value of the great gift proffered him; the woman, so foolishly flinging so pure a love about a man so ignoble.
At last she drew herself away, her tears all spent.
“Come,” she said gently, “it’s getting late. We must be going. Would you mind if I went back by myself? I have so many things to think out for myself. And afterwards—afterwards, I think we will forgive each other. But it is too hard to do that now. Good-bye, dear.”
She held out her hand.
There was nothing for him to do but to take it.
They parted.