# Tussock Land/Chapter 6

VI
Next morning King’s ankle was sufficiently recovered for him to mount his horse, and after breakfast he announced his intention of riding to the Hathaways’ homestead. Aroha accompanied him on her mare as far as the dip in the saddle separating the two valleys. King was a poor rider, like many colonials, whom the English comfortably picture as clad in soft red shirts and sombrero hats, ever riding wildly over rough country to a fusillade of cracking stockwhips. King had spent his life in a town, where he had little to do with horses. But the girl sat her mare with a superb grace. In this lonely back-blocks country she usually rode astride, man’s fashion; but this morning she had reluctantly asked John to get out her rarely-used side-saddle, and had struggled into an unaccustomed riding skirt. She wondered if such a sacrifice of the feeling of freedom was necessary, whether a real fairy prince was worth the trouble? This prosaic detail had not occurred to her before. In her dreams the fairy prince had always swept her tumultuously to his saddle and galloped off with her arms about his neck. And the real fairy prince could just manage to keep his own saddle.
There was little conversation as the two rode up the valley. The chill of the morning was upon them both—that strange sense of separation, that conviction of loneliness that comes upon man in the naked ​light of the day. King’s heart was oppressed by the thought that he was riding out of Aroha’s life. But the girl’s heart was light: she knew.
At the top of the saddle she drew her bridle short. “Good-bye,” she said, and smiled.
“Good-bye,” he stammered, miserable.
She looked straightly at him and paused. King’s heart beat wildly.
“And—” she paused. “You must put a hot-water bandage on that ankle as soon as you get home.”
“Yes?” he said tentatively. He had hoped for such a different speech.
“And you’ll have to lie up for a day or two and nurse it.”
“But I want to see you again, to—”
"No, no; you mustn’t. Your ankle—”
She was cruelly indifferent this morning. He vaguely wondered if this woman was the spirit of the hills that he had met between the earth and the sky.
Perhaps if he had looked keenly at her he would have seen that she was summing him up. He was at the judgment-bar of a woman’s heart.
“Good-bye,” she called, as she shook her reins, “and—don’t forget about the bandages.”
The next minute her horse had disappeared at a canter over the ridge. King moved miserably down the slope towards the Hathaways’. If he had glanced back ten minutes later, he would have seen the girl sitting upon her horse, once more outlined against the sky, still as a stone. She was watching him, judging him, proving his claim to the fairy princedom of her heart.
And with a little genuine disapproval she admitted to herself that already the prince, rightful or pretending, was upon the throne.
​With a sigh she turned her horse and rode down to the homestead to superintend the baking of the bread.
And though the girl came often on sunny afternoons to the ridge she never saw in the distance a rider breasting the long slope, spurring swiftly to claim his vassal kingdom.
But one afternoon a week later she heard King’s voice at the porch of her home. His ankle was almost well, he told her, as, with a swift glance of dismay at her workaday dress and untidy hair, she ran out to greet him. He went on to say that he had faithfully followed her directions; the hot-water bandages had been assiduously applied by Mary Hathaway.
This information Aroha felt to be a little needless. As soon as she had learnt that King was staying at the Hathaways’, she had thought of Mary. And during the last week she had thought a great deal about her. She had even gone as far as to picture Mary applying those bandages, and it needed a careful and discriminating study of Aroha’s pretty features in the cracked looking-glass in her wee bedroom to dismiss that picture from her mind. Providence had been good to give Mary such a liberal dower of freckles and such a largesse of nose. She never did care for Mary.
King noticed that the mention of Mary was gratuitous. Aroha froze. The throne of the fairy prince tottered. The girl told him that she was exceedingly busy—“exceedingly” was the word she used, and it smote King like a knell—and she would not be able to stand talking at the porch; but if he cared to come in and see her mother...? She added that she yet felt anxious about the ankle, advised him to go home—“immediately” was the word she used, and have it attended to again. He could be sure of ​receiving every attention at the Hathaways’—every possible attention.
King replied, assuring her, with what he felt was somewhat excessive courtesy, that he would follow her advice. No, he would not stay to tea, the ankle was beginning to pain him already, and the sooner he got those bandages renewed the better. So in a cloud of dignity he departed.
And Aroha assured herself that she had done the only thing possible. And then she clenched her long slim fingers in a gust of primitive rage. He was so petty, so boyish, so silly, to bring in that gawky creature’s name. Mary had eyebrows and flat hair that were of the colour of mud! As if she cared! Then she went down to the woolshed and made herself unpleasant to John.
After a few days spent by Aroha in alternating moods of haughty scorn and abject regret, chance took her to a part of the run seldom visited save by the daily inspection of the boundary rider. She had not revisited the saddle between the valleys; pride forbade her to so humiliate herself, but this part of the run commanded the only comprehensive view on the station. From the brow of one hill she could even see the Hathaways’ homestead. This day, as she breathed her horse at the top of this hill, her glance eagerly scanned the country, and instantly she picked out in the distance a horseman that might be King Southern. She immediately turned her horse’s head, proceeding in a direction that would cut his path at right angles. That would leave everything to him.
When they met she had for him a frank smile of welcome. She forgot to inquire about the ankle, and he never mentioned bandages.
So for many days the two came together, learnt ​to know each other, quarrelled, sulked, made concessions, and became friends. Friendship for many natures in this complex life of modernity is a fragile and slow growth. Modern individuals have so many corners to their personalities that it is often impossible for them to find other natures with which to harmonise. A growing friendship is a gradual thing, meeting with many checks, many unsuspected revelations, many disappointments, for the tolerance of which time and sympathy are needed. And in the case of love the inherent antagonism of the sexes, even the inherent antagonism of personalities, makes love a thing of sudden disappointments, unforeseen and inexplicable hates.
Only when the barriers are surmounted, only when a woman can say, “Yes, I dislike that side of my lover’s character, I was disappointed in that action; but I love him as he is. I would not have one fault away, one weakness erased. That makes him what he is; each little weakness builds up a personality unique and lovable. That is his way; that is himself”—only then does a woman know that love has surmounted the last barrier of self, that love is the most puissant of all things.
So these two blind young souls had their moments of inexpressible happiness, their age-long nights of intolerable anguish, their hard hates, their self-reproaches, their loving kindnesses and their swift compassions. Had Aroha been the gentle maiden of romance, had King been the colourless “walking gentleman” of a modern novel, these anguishes, these raptures had not been. But they both had individualities that conflicted and persistently strove, that would not give assent to a tardy truce. Each must love wholly or love not at all. Each heart must be quite sure.
​But to the boy and the girl this inevitable jarring of two strong personalities was subconscious. They did not guess the reason for all the unhappinesses, all the splendours that came to their souls; they did not understand how inevitable such a conflict was. King felt dimly that he did not show at his best before the girl; never before had he seen his weaknesses and his meannesses come so readily to the surface. She divined of his thoughts too much. And Aroha never knew before that she could be so captious, so many-mooded, so bad-tempered, so hasty of judgment, so needlessly cruel.
At the end of a fortnight Aroha did not know whether she liked or hated King the more. But that she was in love with him, heedlessly in love with him, she knew.
He told her of his life, his ambitions, his hopes. His father was an Anglican clergyman in Dunedin, a man in whose quick brain the logical faculty had developed at the expense of his emotional characteristics. He chilled the boy. But his mother compensated. She did not understand her only child; but love knows no bounds, and her blind, patient sympathy and foolish mother-tenderness helped more to the development of the boy than his father’s too penetrating analysis of him. The father understood, the mother loved. Between his father and himself was the swift understanding of the intellect, but between his mother and himself was the swifter understanding of the heart. The son stood outside his mother’s brain, outside his father’s heart. So ever he remained apart from his father’s life, while there were moods in which he was all his mother’s.
King was at present studying for the legal profession. He was in his first term at Otago Uni​versity; this was his first summer vacation. But he had his ideals. Youth always has its ideals. That is the pitiable thing about youth, when we look back. He hated the idea of becoming a lawyer; he worked at it because he was at the university; but his longings were far other. Almost with a blush, certainly with an apology, King told the girl of his ambition. He would be an artist. In her soul Aroha clapped hands. And as he went on to tell her how sure he was of his ability to paint, how art called him ever, the girl edged closer to him. He was indeed a fairy prince; art was the vassal kingdom into which he would make his triumphing way. He told her of his dreams, his plans. He would study in Dunedin, then go to Sydney, perhaps to Paris! It all seemed so big, so marvellous, and yet so near, so wonderfully close! Enchantment was about the girl.
And when next day he showed her a pencil sketch of her face done from memory, she laughed in a rich delight. This was a homage that she had dreamt not of.
But something in the boy’s references to the drudgery of his law studies aroused in Aroha a vague resentment.
“I don’t like to hear you run down hard work,” she said. “Painting must be a delightful occupation, but we all have to work—haven’t we?”
“Don’t I work at my art?” he said, with boyish inflation of phrase. “Isn’t drawing and painting work, just as much as passing examinations in jurisprudence?”
“Or stoning raisins, or making bread, or milking?” she said. “Yes, but art seems a different sort of work, almost a pastime, a play. But we all have to do the hard, uninteresting kinds of work, and yet ​it is just that kind of work that is necessary to make this life tolerable. But why do you want to be a great artist?”
The boy paused. It had always seemed to him a sufficient fact in itself.
“Why, to paint a great picture!” he said.
“But why?”
“Because, just for the pleasure I would have in being able to do it.”
“Surely that is not enough? Work must be done for some other reason than the mere joy in doing it. It seems to me that your art is only your amusement, after all. If we managed our run on your principle, there would be a lot of dirty jobs undone.”
“But isn’t it better to paint a great picture than to to be a mere lawyer?”
“Or build a house, or grow sheep?” she questioned, laughing. “No, there is a lot of work I don’t like, can’t like; but it has just got to be done.”
“But haven’t you got any ambition to be great, to do something great.”
In the boy ambition was the only spur. Dimly he felt that he possessed a great unusual talent. He had been given a capacity to draw, to see colour and form, as, it seemed to him, few others in this world could see it. He had been set apart from the rest of humanity by a special grace; he was an artist. Hence the common life was not for him. It was his duty to himself, to the race—(please remember that King was young yet)—to develop that talent to the uttermost, to make the fullest use of his great gift. For him, apart from the use of that talent, life did not exist. He was unable to conceive what existence would be for him, were he deprived of his ability to see colour and beauty as subtly as he saw ​them. He could not enter into the mind of those—the vast majority of the race—who had no such special gift. He disdained to exalt himself above them, so he said to himself with the magnanimity of youth; but he could not escape from the fact that he was marked out from the crowd by a special sign. He was one of the elect of the earth.
(Perhaps you will say that King was a prig. All I will say is that he was very young. Though, perhaps, later on, King himself came to the conclusion you have already reached.)
It was only vaguely that he comprehended that there were masses of individuals whose outlook on life held no glamour of ambition. He scarcely understood the drab and neutral universe in which these colourless entities dwelt. That there were millions who were content to do their duty humbly, to proceed uncomplainingly from task to task, to live from day to day the same uneventful round, to look no further ahead than the next sunrise, and to die at the end of their monotonous lives, not chafing at the thought of unachieved possibilities, not rebels of fate, but resigned to their portion of labour and cheerful in the dim gratification of duty done—this, to King Southern, artist and prig-presumptive, was unguessed at.
Something of this he told Aroha confusedly.
The girl smiled. “How he believes in himself!” she thought, with a sudden uncalled-for admiration. “He is so sure, so self-secure! He must be an artist. He will win fame. Only”—(and her heart was for a moment stilled)—“if he ever learns to doubt himself, to mistrust his talent, I am afraid for him.” Then a swift compassion swept over her. “But if ever that moment comes,” she thought, “I ​shall be there to help him, to nurse him, to shield him, to mother him!”
“King,” she said, after a long silence, “you must not despise common, monotonous work. For,” she added with a quiet dignity, “that is the only sort of work I can do myself.”