Tussock Land; a Romance of New Zealand and the Commonwealth/Chapter 3
III
Aroha stood one terrified moment, then ran forward down the slope. The horse swerved past her at a gallop and disappeared over the crest of the hill. Even in her anxiety she recognised the animal; it was one of the riding hacks from Hathaway’s run.
There was nobody in sight. She slackened her pace with a sense of dismay. The horse had gone; even the thud of its hoofs on the ground had died away. The incident seemed almost unreal. She was quite alone; only a hawk stood high and black and motionless in the windy sky.
From the tussocks that had concealed him rose a figure, and the girl’s heart said tumultuously, “The Fairy Prince!” but it was only a boy—certainly not twenty years old—who had been thrown from his horse. He came limping towards Aroha, dazed and bleeding and angered.
“Where’s my horse?” he asked hurriedly, and paused at gaze.
Something checked the eager inquiry on the girl’s lips, too; and for a minute these two looked at each other, shut in by the infinite loneliness of hill and sky, almost with an air of recognition. The conviction swept suddenly over each that they had met before—when? ... how long ago? ... in what other unimaginable world?
The wind swept the waving yellow tussock slope, the white cloudlets sped across the turquoise sky, the solitary hawk paused on wide wings watching. It seemed as if the whole world waited for some approaching miracle. So they stood—boy and girl—at gaze.
And to these two young souls those few moments were an eternity. In that startled interchange of glance the old patient world was weaving two lives into one. And the pattern was of a wondrous hue, and the woof thereof was love.
Aroha was dressed in an old blue print gown, whose short skirt was a reminiscence of her seventeenth year. Nineteen years demanded another six inches. Beneath its ragged edge the creases of her thick stockings about her ankles plainly showed. On her feet were thick-soled, stubby-toed shoes. On her head, tilted back, was a faded blue sun-bonnet that had known many washings.
To the boy this homely-attired girl seemed hardly human—an ærial thing poised between him and the sky, a frail spirit impalpable, maybe the soul of this wide expanse of tussock land. Her figure was slight, too girlish for her nineteen years, but in New Zealand youth lingers long. She wore no corsets, and as she leaned, swaying with a supple grace against the audacious wind, the loose, blue print dress displayed the outline of her long slim limbs and the sweep of her boyish breasts.
From beneath her sun-bonnet a few wisps of brown hair strayed—deeply brown in shadow, but chestnut when the sunlight lifted it in his golden fingers. Her eyes were richly brown—of the hue that is too vivid and warm for black, too dark for brown. There was passion in those eyes, but there was reserve and strength. Above them her eyebrows ran toward each other, not meeting but ending with a wonderful upward ripple that gave her face a strangely arresting and ethereal charm. Her nose almost had an irresponsible tilt; but the firm, full lips, and the deliberate chin gave the face a gravity and a strength rare in womanhood. The keen, crisp winds of this land of the far south had stung her cheeks into a rich brown glow.
And to King Southern, a-stare, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever dreamed of.
“Did you—I beg your pardon—but did you see where my horse went?” he said at last, groping for words, reluctant to break this strange silence that seemed to have bound them about with chains.
“Oh, he went over the ridge. I guess by this he’s down at the homestead gate,” she replied almost as unwillingly. Then a quick sympathy leapt into her face, and she cried, “But, oh, you’re hurt?”
Her voice was rich and wonderful. An aroma of youth seemed to come from her presence. King had never imagined that a woman could have such a voice. He saw at once that all his conceptions of womanhood—and he had many—would have to be revised. He had not taken into account the great factor of a woman’s voice.
“Hurt?” he echoed. “Yes, I suppose so.” He looked down at his leg with a certain sense of its complete detachment from his concerns. In the presence of such a being a mere bruised ankle seemed an unwarrantable intrusion.
“I don’t think it’s much,” he said at length, gingerly trusting his weight upon the foot. “I’m not much of a rider, you know; and the horse’s leg seemed to give way all at once, and I found myself among the tussocks. I think I came off over his shoulder.”
“Put his foot in a rabbit-hole,” she explained.
“Oh, that’s it?” he said, enlightened. Then his wondering gaze returned to her.
“But who—” he said and stopped.
Suddenly the girl beneath his gaze became self-conscious. She remembered the shortness of the old skirt. She felt annoyed at herself caught at this hateful disadvantage by a mere boy. She understood from his glance the thickness of her stockings, the ugliness of her shoes. She moved behind a big tussock that concealed at least her feet from his eyes.
“Oh, me?” she said, “I’m Aroha—Aroha Grey. We live down there; that’s our station—Westella, it’s called. You can see the homestead from the top of the ridge.”
She moved quickly up the slope and gained the crest. The boy paused to watch her. He noticed her swift, lithe stride, the sinuous grace of her every movement. He never remembered having seen a woman walk so easily. She swam.
She did not turn. “That’s the station,” she said, pointing. Far down the valley she could see a black speck. It was the horse that had been stopped by the barbed wire fence of the top paddock.
But the boy made no response. She turned. He was limping painfully toward her.
Immediately she was at his side. “Oh, you’re hurt, you’re hurt!” she cried in a low voice.
“No, no!” he said, almost angrily.
“Let me help you. Lean on my shoulder,” she commanded.
He drew himself erect.
“Thank you,” he said stiffly. “I can manage by myself.”
“You can’t,” she declared. “You must let me help you; I am stronger than you.”
She put her arm, slim and muscular, about his waist. The warm, soft touch of it thrilled him strangely. It was the first time that a girl’s arm had been about him.
But to be succoured by a woman, a mere girl! He shook himself roughly from her.
“Stronger?” he said with scorn. “A woman stronger than a man?”
Instantly she was abashed. How could she be stronger than he—her fairy prince? It was his strength that was to be the sceptre that would rule her heart. But—and she flushed—surely she had not so soon accepted him as her fairy prince? She shot an intent look at him. That her fairy prince? A mere boy, thin, sallow-faced, with large dark eyes and lips that were almost a woman’s. The well-cut nose and the spacious brow redeemed the features, but the mouth and chin were—her mind leapt at the word—weak. He was a boy, unmarked by the lines that life would give; he was likable, lovable, perhaps. It was a handsome face, but not—ah, never!—the face of a leader of men. Here was no conquering prince. He had the eyes of a dreamer, the infinitely sad eyes of a dreamer. And yet...
She was recalled to herself by a sudden blanching of the boy’s face. He stood a moment swaying and would have fallen had she not leant forward and caught him in her arms. She was almost as tall as he. He steadied himself at her touch. She saw the perspiration on his forehead, the little dent between the brows.
“Thanks,” he said gratefully. “I’m afraid you are—stronger than me, after all!”
In a moment she was all mother. “If you can walk like this, I’ll help you down to our homestead; but, perhaps, I had better leave you here and run down and get a dray sent up for you?”
King hesitated. It would be horrible to go down to the homestead a mere helpless weight on a girl’s arm. But he felt her presence very near him. Her face, keenly pitying, was at his shoulder. Her eyes made him waver. It was very well to stand thus; and she was divinely near. The setting sun lay upon the valley, flinging the hills ablaze. Her face was lit as with an exaltation hardly human. He looked into her eyes. She returned the glance frankly, proudly, triumphantly—the unconscious look of the woman who has found her mate.
So the boy and the girl were held one moment silent, with steady eyes. And in that moment the earth completed her deliberate, age-old plan, weaving these diverse two into a bond inseparable. Time and Life might break that bond; their paths that had so haphazardly crossed, might sweep apart, never in this wide vastness of the world to meet again. It mattered not; that moment had broken down the barriers. They would move apart changed, each carrying something of the soul of the other, each leaving something of a soul behind. Of that moment a child had been born that would live and grow eternally. This patient old earth had done her part.
And boy and girl felt only a great glow of happiness inexplicable. Of the great alchemy of life, of the grand experiment made by that ancient chemist upon them, they were blindly ignorant. Only to each in that moment it seemed as if somewhere, afar off, there was a faint sound of singing. . . .
“I think, if you don’t mind, I can get down with you helping me,” he said.
The sun stood on the farthest range of golden hills. About them waved the wide ocean of tussocks.
So, facing the sun, the two moved slowly over the tussocks, sinking together into the darkening valley.