Tussock Land; a Romance of New Zealand and the Commonwealth/Chapter 28
XXVIII
John suddenly tired of Sydney and slipped off to New Zealand. He wanted to get cool, he said. King went to see him off, and as he stood on the crowded, black, festering wharf, beneath a dome of implacable, hazy heat, and watched the clumsy steamer swing slowly off and grope her way among the plague of ferry boats in these much-churned waters of the upper harbour, he felt the attack of a sudden loneliness. There, where that steamer would be in four days, lay his own land; he yearned for the cooling sight of snow-swathed, glistening peaks.
And in the months of great heat that followed, when blazing days alternated with sombre, grey-clouded days of humid heat or a tropical downpour that brought no coolness with it but left the wet world steaming, he grew more and more listless. The thought of Aroha came persistently to him in this period; but he reflected that though he might return to Maoriland the chances of his seeing her again were remote. And if he and she did meet, what bond, save the bond of already faded memories, could be spoken of between them? She had made no sign; her mind was filled with other memories. Yet the thought that New Zealand held Aroha seemed to vaguely strengthen the ties that were slowly drawing him back to his own land.
Stirred by the possibility of once more returning to New Zealand, sometimes he took out a canvas and made studies. He would feel his way, His ambition was not dead.
Then one day his chance came.
The one friend whom he had not forgotten in New Zealand was his old university chum, Charles Craven, the lawyer who was also a poet. King and he had at intervals exchanged letters. But King had been somewhat troubled by the details of his friend’s career given in those rare letters of his. Craven had gone on with his legal studies; on graduation at the university he had entered a lawyer’s office in Dunedin, and at last, determining to set up in practice for himself, he had moved to a rising bush township in the North Island. The inherited dislike of the city had showed itself in him; and his acumen was not at fault in the move. For Waiatua was the centre of a newly-opened block of forest land, upon the proposed North Island trunk railway-line. And his business was prospering.
But King noticed from his letters that, as his legal business prospered, the earlier ambition of his life, the determination to be a poet, had strangely pined. He spoke less and less of his poetry. In reply to King’s direct questions he admitted that he had less inclination nowadays to write poetry: the inspiration did not seem to come so easily. The glorious days of splendid eagerness to compose had passed. In the absorption of his legal work his brain was claimed more and more by legal technicalities. He had not the time to write poetry. There were other things more important. Besides, he had married a wife.
But, in all his correspondence with his friend, he held to an intense admiration for King’s courageous fight for the recognition of his art. Charles wrote to King from the standpoint of one who had failed in his chosen domain, and yet had found much in life to interest and console him, to one who stood apart, solitary and revered, upon the steep pinnacle of a great ambition. Good-naturedly he kept for King the admiration once he had thought not unworthy for himself. But that was before he had gone in for law, before he had married a wife. Of King’s recent breakdown he had not heard. King had not been able to mention it to one to whom he felt it would mean so much.
And now, in the course of a discursive letter to King, Craven, after reproaching him for his long silence, mentioned the fact that his legal practice had so prospered of late that he was beginning to consider the necessity of finding a partner. But the difficulty of getting a good man was great. All the smart young barristers whom he knew preferred to make their way in the big cities. To enter into partnership with him would mean practically to bury oneself in the wilderness. But for himself, as he had long ago given up the idea—if he had ever more than vaguely held it—that he was destined to rise high in his profession, he did not regret his removal to the country, with its satisfactory concomitant of a steady and increasing practice. Perhaps some day he would stand for Parliament...
King saw in that chance mention of his friend’s intended partnership the opportunity for his return to New Zealand. He knew that Craven would be glad to have him as his partner. Already King’s position in the legal firm was satisfactory, but there was little hope of his rising further in the office; and he was not well enough known, nor possessed of sufficient capital, to think of setting up in practice for himself in Sydney. But a partnership with his old friend in Waiatua would ask for no capital; it was a steady business, and the work would not be hard. Besides, it would be in his own country.
But it was not easy to decide. He turned instinctively to Miss Smith for advice. The same afternoon he met her as she passed his office. He knew the time she came by, and sometimes, when he wanted companionship, he waited for her. He noticed this afternoon that she was wearing a great bunch of wattle that he had left at her door that morning. He noted, too, a startled air of smartness about her trim, drab-coloured person. He wondered... perhaps she was in love—with one of the clerks at the photographic studio. He tried to picture her married—a mother of a family—and failed to call up any picture at all. Her future was as indefinite as her present. She was not an individual that one could hang fancies upon. No, she would just go on retouching, retouching. Yet he was glad that she was wearing his wattle.
They walked through the Domain on their way to Darlinghurst. It was a pleasant afternoon, cool with the delicious zest of the southerly. It looked temptingly refreshing toward the harbour, and without a word they turned into the Botanical Gardens. Under one of the big bamboo groves they found a seat and watched a tall fountain spray its misty coolness across the thick sward of buffalo grass. The southerly whispered faint messages to the delicate plumes of the swaying bamboos.
He told her of the letter.
“What does it mean?” she asked him, almost passionately. “Are you going away?”
“Well, it seems to me a chance, you know, to—”
“But a lawyer in a country town! It doesn’t sound tempting!”
“I don’t know. It means getting back to New Zealand, to my own country. And after that I need not always stay there. I might set up in Dunedin. You know, I’ve always been a stranger here.”
Barbara Smith looked away. “Yes,” she breathed softly, “you’re a stranger here. There is nothing to bind you to Australia now.”
“Nothing—now,” he echoed, with an absolute conviction that seemed to the woman like a verdict of death. And she would lose him for ever. Lose him? She almost laughed aloud. Why, she had never possessed him—nor one part of him!
“But your career?” she began, fighting for something that seemed to her all that life could ever mean. “You will give that up?”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I cannot paint—at least, I shall not be able to paint for years. I am not hopeless about it. But I feel I must give up a lot. I’ve had my try, and failed. For the present I must put it aside. But in Maoriland I might take it up again; I feel that in my own country...” His voice trailed away, his eyes aloof upon the inconceivably distant horizon.
“But, shut up in New Zealand, what chance would you have of learning? You need the stimulus of artistic minds. Here you are still in the atmosphere.”
At any cost she would hold him near her.
“Ah! you believe in me!” he said gladly. “I think you’re the only person who still believes in me. Why?”
But she gave no answer, did not move. Then he continued, slowly: “I’ve thought it all out. I owe something to the world; I must pay for my attempt. Now I must set to work in earnest. I’ve been long enough among the clouds; now I must find a foothold on earth. But while I stay here I find myself beginning to wonder again whether I can paint. It leaves me restless, eager to take up the brush again. I want to get away from the smell of the paint. I mean to put art away from me. I want to take my place in the ranks of the workers, do my share with the others. Perhaps, years afterwards, when I know my limitations better, I may take it up again. Perhaps this is a phase that I must pass through; it seems to me that I need a rest from art. I must come in contact with the real work of the world. I’ve been dallying too long. Hard work is the tonic I need. I owe it to life. I want to win people’s respect—my own respect. You would not hold me back—advise me to stay?”
Could she? Why not let him see—not by voice, but one glance would suffice—that he was so much to her? He would not be slow to understand. And if she told him of her love for him, would he not shelter her from her shameful immodesty? For a few mad moments she dallied desperately with this thought. Women had done this thing. Was she such a coward?
But if she let him see her stupendous secret—and he merely pitied her! That was the terrible possibility. She could not face that, not even for the sake of her great love.
Besides, was she not selfish and mean to seek to hold him to her? What was she to him that she should put herself in the balance against his heart’s desire? And in her soul she respected him for the strength that underlay that resolution. But all her womanhood revolted against the thought that she was not of value to him. She would make him the wife he unconsciously craved—the mother she dimly yearned to be.
But he did not know it, would never know it! And perhaps there was someone hidden in the shadows of the future, waiting among the years till he came by, someone whom God in his heaven had, at the beginning of things, promised for his mate. She was not that woman; and yet how could any woman love him better than she did? Her decision was taken. She loved him—ah! she so loved him!—so she let him go.
They walked home together in the dusk, home to the boarding-house that meant not home to either, and yet was as near home as one was ever to reach.
So King wrote to his friend, offering himself for the position of partner, and received a cable asking him to come over at once. A fortnight later his passage was booked for New Zealand.
The day before the steamer sailed he had been packing all the morning and found himself unexpectedly with an afternoon on his hands. He had said good-bye to all his friends, but as he was turning out a drawer in his room he came upon a bundle of old letters. He glanced carelessly at the writing before adding them to the growing heap upon the floor. He recognised the writing of Gertrude. A recollection of all that once she had meant to him overcame him, and—even yet a dallier in sensations—he felt that it was impossible for him to leave Australia without telling her of his intention.
He took a tram to the city and made his way to Circular Quay. The Mosman boat was just coming into sight. He waited for its arrival, strolling to the edge of the landing-stage. Beside him he noticed an old blind man and his wife. She had led him quite to the water’s edge, and he stood gazing, with sightless eyes, across the invisible water, intent upon the sound of the approaching paddle-wheels, King watched him curiously, What was a blind man doing there? What pleasure could he get from such an experience?
The harbour swam in a rich glow of sunlight; colour played freakishly upon every wave; everywhere in water and air was an incessant, unwearied movement; life glittered and shone; warmth and exhilaration was in the air; white foam and green wave made pleasant harmony of hue; the vivid colours of women’s dresses sent a fresh and everchanging spray of light upon the eye.
And in the midst of this riot of colour the old man stood solitary, shut for ever out of this splendid paradise. He was a thousand universes away, as far from his kind as if he dwelt in a cosmos that had only two dimensions. He could not see. Nothing of all that glory was for him, none of it could touch him; now he was for ever enveloped in an imaginable loneliness. It was piteous!
King was touched with the pathos of it. Perhaps the man had been a sailor, and now that his sight had been withdrawn from him, now that all he felt was a blank, incomprehensible wall broken by murmurs that came as from a vast immensity beyond, he made his wife lead him out again to smell the keen splendour of the sea, to feel again its salt breath upon his eager cheek. It was piteous!
The boat arrived and he got on board. He saw the old woman lead her husband carefully back to a seat on the landing-stage, without a word. The old man sat down silently, patiently—it seemed to King infinitely appeased.
The incident sickened King. Life was bitterly cruel, uselessly malignant. Wherever one looked there lurked pathos.
At Gertrude’s home he was shown into the drawing-room. She was at home. He sat down. He remembered the room so well. Once it had seemed to him—as all the house had seemed to him—almost a shrine, sacred because it held the wonder of Gertrude’s common daily life. Among these pieces of furniture she indifferently moved; those unconscious flowers had been tenderly touched by her fingers; the soulless piano was sacrosanct.
He smiled lightly at the thought now. After all, she was merely an ordinary girl, one of the innumerable feminines. And upon her he had placed robe after robe of ineffable attributes; and now that he had ruthlessly stripped her bare of all of them she stood before him a woman that could no longer exact worship, a being whom he could criticise and judge. Once he had believed that without her life would be impossible; yet their paths had separated and neither seemed to feel the severance. Life seemed to him to mean nothing but the adaptation of oneself to the changes in one’s environment, nothing but an easy faculty for putting up with things.
And now King recalled the picture of the blind man at Circular Quay. Perhaps, after all, what he had seen was not pathetic. He felt sure that if he had questioned the blind man he would have expressed himself as not discontented. He had lost his sight, true; but that was long ago, almost forgotten. At first it had been hard—terribly hard—but gradually had come other compensations. His world had mysteriously changed, but he was still alive, still capable of the mere joy of existence. And this new world into which he had been so inexplicably flung was a large and wondrously varied world. The veil that had been let down before him was not impenetrable, Of late he had felt it slowly thinning and melting away; he had almost forgotten there was a veil, Already it was becoming difficult to remember exactly what sight was; and he was beginning in his mind to question whether sight was of much value after all. It seemed to him that within the great greyness that surrounded his existence there was no need for sight. It would only confuse and annoy. He found he got on well enough without it; and a new world—a very subtle and delicate world of touch had gradually enveloped him. Ah! he understood that universe of touch; he was at home there! Nature was adapting herself, as with her ancient, insidious wisdom she always adapted herself, to the changed environment. And so regret had not long survived the moment when it was useless to regret. Grief dies. That is the most hopeful lesson of life. And yet how many a grieving heart has rebelled against the death of an old, jealously-revered sorrow!
And this old blind man was just as cheerful as he had been before his loss of sight. He was alive, able to exist. That was the main thing. If sight were to be restored to him he would be glad—when the pain in his eyes had died down and he had become used to the glare from that newly-opened window; but if he were permitted to live altogether in this misty greyness he would not grumble. So even here pathos had eluded him. And King dimly guessed the rapture far transcending his own delight that that vaguely-remembered vision of ships and sunlight and the sea had brought to the blind old man.
Was there any pathos in anything? Did we not put into the lives of others pathos that had no existence save in our own minds? Was not pathos, by a sweet decree of life, incapable of being perceived by those whom we thought pathetic? Was there, then, any pathos at all? We read too much into the sufferings of others. There were always the compensations. He remembered Jennie Wave, the Anæmic Niece at his boarding-house. She suffered, indeed, and cried out. Yet within the narrow limits of her life she could have found happiness. But she had not learnt Nature’s lesson, she had not accommodated herself to her environment. She, an invalid, should have kept her ambitions invalid. So she had found unhappiness, when Nature, the soother, was at her hand with the gift of content. But even this wilful soul had her compensations, for life is no niggard consoler. She had shut her life within the splendid wonderland of a dream, and the domain she had chosen was more glorious than any that grey life had to show. Within her narrow bedroom she had caught and caged an iridescence of life and colour that eluded the blinded world. Out of four walls and a bed she had built a splendid, fantastic, impossible heaven.
And as he waited—Gertrude surely was not hurrying—he attempted to recall the passion he had spent on this girl who was now a stranger to him. He had forgotten the intensity of it already. So it would continue to fade, and in a few years he would have completely forgotten, completely adapted himself to his environment. And once he had anguished, yearned, passionately desired....
He heard her step in the passage and the blood swept to his temples. So she was part of him still. Not all of him had grown callous. Her image was still in his soul; she was part of himself, and he could not escape from himself.
She came into the room, exquisitely dressed. It occurred to him as they murmured greetings that she had taken particular trouble to appear at her best, perhaps in order that he might see all that he had lost.
"So you’re going away ?” she said lightly, though the shadow in her eyes deepened. “I’m so sorry.”
It was all so banal to the man. He wondered why he had come. She murmured her regrets as any chance acquaintance might have murmured them. And he had held that strange, aloof, unassailable thing for an eternity passionately throbbing in his arms! And she sat on one side of the room and he on the other, and with difficulty they kept up a discursive conversation.
"You’ll have some tea?” she asked after a pause, and King, with a gasp of relief, assented. It would carry them over the disconcerting intervals. He remembered, as the maid came in with the tea, that when Gertrude had had tea with him in the old days each had rallied the other on the palpable fact that they had lost their appetites. King recalled that then he had been too much occupied by Gertrude’s overpowering beauty and the fact of her near presence to him to pay any attention to material needs.
Now he noticed that he asked for a third cup, and that Gertrude laughingly kept pace.
“It’s such a hot afternoon!” she sighed.
She was wonderfully beautiful. But the thought that all that wonder of grace was for another gave him no pang, He found himself rejoicing in the fact of her beauty as one would rejoice in the art of a great picture. He noted the subtle harmonies of her lovely colouring, cool dress and the darkened drawing room, and felt only one desire—to paint her.
They talked of impersonal things. And yet he knew that underneath that flow of chatter lay the deep currents of memory, moving noiselessly to their destined end. And she knew. In her mind a memory of moon-lit sea, a swirl of waves and a dome of dim stars, suddenly came into her brain with the cruel vividness of a photograph. She paused in the midst of a sentence, and silence fell.
At last King looked up and met her eyes. He forced himself to speak.
“Well, good-bye,” he said, with difficulty refraining from adding “Gertrude.” “It is time I went.”
“Good-bye; good luck!” she said.
“We part friends?” he asked, seeing, as he uttered the words, the futility of the question.
“Friends? Of course; why not? We were always friends, weren’t we?”
They shook hands.
Into King’s mind came a picture of sullen white lines of foam beneath the impassive serenity of the moon, and beneath him he felt the slow, silky lift of the ground-swell of the Pacific, moving with a blind magnificence across the world.