# Tussock Land/Chapter 4

IV
It was a new Aroha, less ethereal, more human, that King saw that evening at the homestead. She had changed her short gown for a skirt that emphasised her slim tallness; at her throat was a piece of lace, and her hair had been laboriously smoothed from its rebellion, and lay in heavy waves of glowing brown upon her head. She had grown from the spirit of the waste to a woman, conscious of her sex, hedged round with home-keeping things. King felt dumbly uneasy at the change; it seemed a desecration.
As the two slowly passed the woolshed that afternoon, John, the ploughman, was leading the captured horse to the stable. He paused to throw a sullen scowl at the intruder. Aroha breathlessly explained. John turned and went into the stable. The boy felt his antagonism like a stab.
At the back porch stood the girl’s mother, a tall, gracious, strong woman whose sleeves tucked to the elbow displayed arms brown and robust. Her face was that of a brunette, and her dreamy, dark eyes and full-lipped mouth startled King with some vague memory. Somewhere he had seen her type before.
She came swiftly forward, moving with a swinging litheness that suggested the movements of a wild animal.
“Aroha, are you hurt?” she cried.
King noticed the vibrant quality in her voice. It was richer than the girl’s, but in Aroha’s tones there ​was less the quality of the reed, a note infinitely more human.
“Me? No!” laughed Aroha, nervously, for the first time seeing the necessity and the difficulty of an explanation. “But he—this—”
She had not even asked him his name. Her fairy prince. . . . and she mightn’t like his name!
The boy had seen the quick relief that came into the mother’s face as the girl reassured her. Surely these two loved and understood each other!
“My name is Southern—King Southern,” he said. “I’m staying at the Hathaways’ station for a holiday. I was out riding—I’m not much of a rider—and my horse put his foot in a rabbit-hole, and I came off, and I think I’ve twisted my ankle.”
“Ah, you must come in and lie down, and not think of moving till it’s better. Poor boy!”
So he had been given the sofa near the big open fireplace in the dining-room, and the girl, infinitely tender and proud, had put hot and cold bandages over the throbbing ankle, till its pain eased gradually down to a vague discomfort. Then she had slipped away and returned a new Aroha, more homely, more human.
That evening remained long in the boy’s memory. He lay, like a monarch enthroned, on the sofa and watched the mother and the girl busy about their work. Mrs Grey was darning stockings, and Aroha had brought in a big basin and a bag of raisins which she proceeded expertly and delicately to stone. He watched the girl’s profile in the flickering glare of the slow-burning logs, and noted with a great quiet happiness how often her eyes turned toward him, solicitous about his hurt.
The mother moved about the house, sometimes leaving the two alone together. But on these oc​casions, eagerly desired, passionately hoped for, the boy found himself suddenly shy. An embarrassed silence fell upon them as the mother left the room: there were such momentous things to say, and it was so difficult to begin. So it was with a sense of relief that the two saw Mrs Grey reappear from the kitchen.
The room was furnished in the usual manner of up-country stations. There was the usual number of bad-coloured prints, execrably framed in elaborate monumental frames of corks and pine-cones, the usual almanacs pinned to the wall, the fading uninteresting photographs of faded uninteresting people, the usual suite of horsehair furniture with the usual glacial sofa, the usual collection of shells and curious stones picked up on the run, and on the floor the usual sheep-skin and rabbit-skin rugs, and the usual polychromatic unravelled woollen mats.
Hanging beside the mantelpiece was a finely-polished piece of greenstone. The beautiful workmanship displayed upon this Maori war-club at once attracted King’s eyes. The girl, noting his glance, dipped her fingers in a bowl of hot water, wiped them on her apron, rose and took down the merë from the wall.
“It belonged to my great-grandfather,” she said, with pride.
“But how did he get it?” he asked in surprise. Such a fine piece of greenstone, so elaborately carved and polished, was of great value and evident antiquity. The number of these translucent, greenish jade war-weapons in Maoriland is not many, and every one of these merës has a history and an authenticity established by immemorial legend. These war-clubs are so jealously guarded by the Maori tribes that King was surprised to find such a handsome one in the possession of a mere pakeha.
​“He got it from his ancestors. It has been handed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years. Mother knows all its history.”
King glanced at the girl quickly. She laughed.
“Yes, didn’t you know that my great-grandfather was a Maori? My grandmother was a Maori, too. It was through her that we got it.”
The mother looked up. The boy saw the dreamy, dark eyes, the broad, low forehead, the full lips. He recalled her gracious bearing, her lithe, gliding air of gracious dignity. She was a half-caste.
Aroha went on proudly. “He was a great chief. He owned nearly half the Southern Island; for hundreds and hundreds of miles his sway extended. He died long ago, before the white man came here at all. Mother remembers him. He was a fine old man, tattoed and white-haired. He was killed in a fight—the one death a Maori longs for. It was an age-old tribal feud; for generations these two great tribes had fought each other in the chivalrous Maori fashion, giving each other notice of their coming, succouring each other with gifts of food in order that the fight might be a fair one—a mighty series of hand-to-hand conflicts, chief opposed to chief according to their rank. Sometimes there were surprises, though, and it was in one of these that this old warrior was killed. He was the first chief—as was his jealously-guarded right—to get inside the enemy’s palisade, and as he descended he slipped in a pool of blood, and as he fell a chief’s taiaha knocked him senseless. Afterwards they killed him, tortured him—the brutes! But his tribe, that had withdrawn at the news of his death, revenged his fate, exterminated most of the enemy, enslaved many—and terminated the feud by eating the rest!”
​With a grim laugh the girl ended her tale. For as she recited the story, some trait of her ancestral savagery woke, and a barbaric frenzy fired her body with a rhythmic motion, and swept the blood to her cheek. As she stood above him, tall and lithe and wonderful, she seemed the princess of some olden legend, the re-incarnation of a primitive race. The mother, too, was strangely stirred by the recital. Her eyes shone, her fingers twisted nervously in and out of her work. The thought leapt to King’s mind that here was a fire untamed, a vigour untainted, the strength of a virgin race. Dowered with this racial youth the girl had in her forces unawakened, strengths unguessed. Beneath that beautiful face and the slim, graceful figure smouldered fires unquenchable. What barriers (he vaguely phrased it) had this old world to that virgin strength, that rich, inexhaustible vitality?
But in a moment she was a pakeha again—a simple, unemotional, self-controlled English girl.
“I like those old times,” she said. “And mother likes me for liking them—don’t you, dear?”
She laid her hand gently on the elder woman’s hair. Her mother caught her other hand in a close caress.
Then Aroha told of her childhood. She pointed to the portrait of her father. It was a gentle, lovable face, not the face of a successful man—and, indeed, he had not been a success in life. He had been the last of an Essex family that had once owned many acres in England. But the fortunes of the family had dwindled, and at last there was little left that was not mortgaged. Her father, despairing of rebuilding the prosperity of his race, had emigrated to New Zealand. The old land had meant to him the enervation of his race but new lands promised ​the flowering of new hopes. But he carried to New Zealand too much of the environment that he loved. He had not the alert adaptability necessary for the successful grapple with a new set of circumstances.
Soon after his arrival in Maoriland he had met Aroha’s mother. She was the daughter of a rich runholder who had married a Maori chieftainess. Receiving from his bride great tracts of land he had prospered much, and had given his only daughter a thorough English education. Hinë te Ao, “Daughter of Light,” as he fondly named her, grew up a beautiful girl, and Mr Grey had fallen in love with this beautiful brunette, who, acquiring civilisation with the astonishing rapidity of this splendid race, had yet retained a magnificent beauty and an unconquerable vigour that, to the tall, debonair Englishman, were enchanting. He married her, and theirs was a happy life. To her husband Hinë te Ao was ever a daughter of light.
With characteristic recklessness he had taken up the Westella run, and started, without preparation, the difficult business of sheep-farming. His experience cost him much. The dowry that came to him with his wife rapidly melted away, and year after year he had laboured on, sinking deeper and deeper beneath a sea of mortgages.
At last he had died. His grave was on the hillside—a little space fenced in with barbed wire to keep the cattle out.
He had failed in life, if inability to make money means failure, but to the mother and the girl his life had been one long triumph of kindness and quiet love. He had been very proud of the little daughter who seemed dimly to promise the realisation of all that had eluded him. She was a type ​of this fertile, virgin land. It was one of his greatest griefs that he could not afford to send her to a school in Dunedin, nor could he in those early days of the colony get a governess to stay at this lonely and out-of-the-way station. Perhaps it was his fear of the great loneliness that seemed to encompass him that prevented him making the often-determined-upon effort to send her for a few years to Dunedin. And between father and mother the daughter was roughly educated. He had called her “Aroha,” the Maori word for Love, with a vague hope that the girl’s heart would find in love the compensation that life seemed to have withheld from her.
So her father had relinquished life—almost easily. It was a frail thing he had taken in his hand and gladly let fall. Only, there was his wife and Aroha. But he had no fears for his daughter. She belonged to a new and insistent race that would make the future its own. The gods love youth, and it was among the youthful nations of the earth that the world would be divided. So he turned away from life, half satisfied.
Then, five years ago, the widow had set to work to repair the breach that fate had made in their lives. She was a capable manager, but in her husband’s life she had been too subservient to his personality to prevent him from making costly blunders. But now she had been left alone, charged with the future of her child, and she set to work in earnest. This gracious, stately woman took over the management of the run, and inaugurated a new reign of efficiency and economy.
Already the tide of expenses had turned, and the last year had shown a profit on the working of the estate. Some portion of the heavy mortgage was already paid off.
​King did not learn this history that evening. For that night he was too tired to listen, and the women did not weary him with much talk. At nine o’clock Aroha left the room to set the bread, for to-morrow was the most important day of the week—“new bread day.”
Mrs Grey showed King to his room. As he was undressing he heard a step from the kitchen, and as the girl passed his door she called softly “Goodnight.”
Then her footsteps died away.
But once in bed he did not sleep. “Aroha!” he whispered to himself, “Aroha!... Love!” And at the meaning of the name his face burned. She was the embodiment of love. But when she had spoken her name it had carried to his ears a melody that now seemed strangely lacking. No, he could not recall the precise intonation that seemed to him so rich and glorious. But little fragments of her conversation—in her actual voice, it seemed—came to him as he lay awake. In the darkness he caught fleeting glimpses of her face. He saw her again as she looked swiftly up at him across the table, and he glimpsed for the first time the full richness of her dusky eyes. His eyes followed the swift movements of her slim fingers busy with the raisins. He noted the slow swaying of her bosom as she breathed. He watched the lithe, swinging, erect ease of her walk. He caught a too brief glimpse of her as she stood a moment, wind-buffeted and swaying, against the skyline on the hill, delicate as a just-poised butterfly. And on his ear came once more the full colour of her voice as she laughed. Then his mind came back again to her name, and dwelt there. “Aroha!... Aroha!”
Outside, a sheep dog barked suddenly, and King ​felt the succeeding stillness heavily upon him. The house was very quiet. Then vaguely came upon the boy’s ear a sound that seemed infinitely distant. It seemed to him like the faint whisper of a little breeze over the tussocks. Once more he was standing on that ridge—
Then suddenly he was wide awake, listening. The house, like most up-country houses, had been built haphazardly, at various intervals. If another room was wanted, another room—not always at the same level—was added, or a thin partition of boards divided a large room into two. In an instant the boy knew.
In the room adjoining his someone was sleeping. The bed was against the partition, and in the silence there came clearly to his ears the faint rustle of the bed-clothes, the soft sigh of the breath of a woman deeply sleeping. He divined that it was Aroha.
A sense of desecration came upon him. He had intruded into a temple, sacred as another’s heart. He resolutely shut the sound from his consciousness, and felt his cheek hot.
Yet, after a little interval, he found himself listening. The girl was deeply sleeping. He heard her bosom rise and fall, the faint rustle of the linen came to him like an intimate whisper. She was asleep, and he tossed restlessly awake. Did this meeting matter so little to her, so much to him? But gradually the quiet ebb and flow of that gently-taken breath brought a deep balm upon the boy.
He lay long listening in a delicate delight, drowned in a deep glad consciousness of the utter nearness of her presence to him. It seemed to him that together, hand in hand, they went into paradise....