Tussock Land THE FIRST NOVEL LIBRARY " Mr Fisher Unwin lias projected a new series, to be called 'The First Novel Library.' As the title indicates, it will consist of the first novels of such new authors as show exceptional talent." AthencBum. Each Volume Crown 8vo, Cloth, 6s. ©pinions of tbe fl>ress "Mr Fisher Unwin has had several happy ideas for series of novels. Now Mr Unwin makes a new venture with ' The First Novel Library.' ... It is a speculative enterprise, in the execu- tion of which Mr Unwin's reader certainly deserves sympathy." T/ie Times. " Mr Fisher Unwin has shown a very dark and cunning knowledge of human nature in starting ' The First Novel Library.' The first novel is almost certain to be, whatever else it is, full of industry and solemnity and fire. . . . Mr Fisher Unwin is very wise to capture clever people while they still imagine that it is difficult to be clever." Mr G. K. Chesterton in The World. "If all future issues in 'The First Novel Library' are equal to the opening volume of the series, there should be no doubt about its great success." — Publishers' Circular. " If Mr Unwin will promise us that future instalments shall be in any respect equal to the first, we fancy that even the most cautious will be inclined to invest in six shillings' worth of unstaled genius. . . . We like to fancy the procession of Mr Unwin's green-robed candidates for fame." — Weekly Register. LONDON: T FISHER UNWIN THE FIRST NOVEL LIBRARY Crown 8vo, Cloth, 6s. Vol. I.— WISTONS. A Story in Three Parts. By Miles Amber. " A piece of very fine workmanship. . . . Whoever wrote ' Wistons ' (' Miles Amber ' does not convince me) has a genuine talent, and offers us in a first work, which is certainly not a first effort, something better than unusual promise — unusual achieve- ment." — Speaker. "An admirable piece of work, full of sheer insight and the sense of beauty, and written in a style whose austerity has a singular effectiveness. ' ' — A cademy. Vol. II.— THE SEARCHERS. A Story in Four Books. By Margaretta Byrde. "A novel that deserves, and will command, attention. It is vital and honest, and full of good stuff." — Pilot. Ian Maclaren, Author of "Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush,' writes: "The book is distinguished by insight into character, felicity of style, and a fine spirit of religion." Vol. III.— FROM BEHIND THE ARRAS. By Mrs Philip Champion de Crespigny. " It is no more than justice to say that Mrs De Crespigny's first novel is in no way inferior even to the best work of Mr Stanley Weyman." — St James s Gazette. Vol. IV.— A LADY'S HONOUR. A Chronicle of Events in the Time of Marlborough. By Bass Blake. " Decidedly a success." — Spectator. " Bass Blake, who is well worthy of his place in this gallery, has written a dashing and picturesque tale of Marlborough's wars. ' A Lady's Honour ' is full of honest and picturesque writing." Bookman. Vol. V.— THE FLAME AND THE FLOOD. By Rosamond Langbridge. " There is power, and the promise of greater, in the new volume of ' The First Novel Series.' ... A novel full of poignant keenness of mind and right intuition as to human feeling. . . . This novel is a remarkable achievement." — Vanity Fair. "This new author is a born story-teller. . . . We whole-heartedly like this first effort, and shall look eagerly for a second." — Manchester Guardian. Vol. VI.-A DRAMA OF SUNSHINE Played in Homburg. By Mrs Aubrey Richardson. Vol. VII.— ROSEMONDE. By Beatrice Stott. THE CARDINAL'S PAWN. By K. L. Montgomery. THE KINGDOM OF TWILIGHT. By Forrest Reid. TUSSOCK LAND. By Arthur H. Adams. LONDON: T FISHER UNWIN Tussock Land A ROMANCE OF NEW ZEALAND AND THE COMMONWEALTH BY ARTHUR H. ADAMS Author of " Maoriland, and other Verses." LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN MCMIV All Rights Reserved • ■ i * TUSSOCK LAND I Nineteen, aglow with health, with a heart untroubled, from sheer gladness of living Aroha Grey sang. Overhead was the fathomless blue of the New Zealand sky. Across this arch of turquoise scurried thin wisps of white clouds, as if the keen, persistent wind that swept down the valley had blown the waves of the sky into foam. It was a crisp, splendid autumn day in the south of New Zealand. Already there was a taste of winter in the air, and the breeze that forever roamed these solitudes of tussock land brought with it this afternoon some memory of the Antarctic that had given it birth. The long valley sloped slowly up to the narrow saddle, or ridge, that divided two watersheds. Towards that saddle Aroha Grey was trudging. On each side of her ran a range of hills, and, as she gradually climbed the valley, in the gaps in their sky- lines she caught glimpses of range after range of similar hills, until the horizon curtained in the world. She stood in the centre of a wide sea of treeless land, valley and plain and hill, streaked by winding streams and noisy creeks and made green by swamp. Little patches of scrub hung in the steep gullies of the hills; the sturdy brown standards of the flax and A 2 Tussock Land the faint white feather of the toe drooped over the streams in the valleys, and raupo edged the swamps with a ring of brown spears and green. Here and there a ploughed paddock loomed blue and naked on the river flats, or a sown paddock shone vividly green against the golden grey of the tussocks. But these were but little scars upon the surface of the land ; everywhere else the silky tussocks held sway, cloth- ing spur and valley with a faint tinge of gold. Just before the girl reached the top of the saddle she paused. Ever since she could remember she had halted here for a few moments before making her way to the summit. Before her the slope ran gently up to the horizon; over the edge lay — what? The line of wind-swept tussocks against the sky had in it some faint suggestion of mystery, a vague hint of the unknown. As a child she had always shrunk from going quite to the edge of visible things: before the uncertainty of the unknown she had ever stood silent, wistful, hesitant, wondering. So now, as ever, she halted beneath the edge of the ridge, a little sheltered from the steady stream of wind that poured over it, and let her fancies rove. Yet it furnished an index to her character that never once, however deep the twilight, however haunting the fear of the invisible — and to an imagina- tive child how real, how vivid that terror is ! — she had never turned back without climbing swiftly that diminishing space of homely security and giving one terrified glance into the uncertainty beyond. Only to find it eternally the same, a yellow sweep of valley running down into a nest of level land lost among a monotony of broad-shouldered hills, and against the horizon a jagged line of glistening snow- clad peaks. On days when the rain had washed the atmosphere to a crystalline lucidity the sharp naked Tussock Land 3 outline of that range of mountains, rising majestically, fifty miles away, from an adoring multitude of hills, seemed so near to Aroha that she had only to stretch out her hand and feel the cool smoothness of each dazzling peak. This afternoon as she halted she turned back and glanced at the way she had come. Her song broke suddenly off with a little laugh at her childish fears. Far in the valley beneath her crouched the home- stead, a little group of scattered, unpainted wooden buildings — woolshed, huts, stables, men's quarters and house. The little grey buildings looked pitiably small in the midst of this welter of hills. A few ploughed paddocks surrounded the homestead ; some straggling trees betokened what was still optimisti- cally termed the orchard ; a cart track wound across the paddocks from the woolshed, disappearing far down the valley behind a spur; barbed wire fences faintly pencilled stiff lines across the level ground and ran straightly up the shoulders of the hills. Along the valley writhed a little creek, like a serpent, glinting in and out of the ragged patches of green that clung about its path. And in the west stood the splendid sun, yellowing all the spurs, touching with golden fingers the distant hill-tops. And Aroha wondered, as she had often wondered before, why, with this valley leading so entrancingly into the clear west, the builder of the house had turned his back on the only vista in this sea of crowded hills, and set his house grimly facing the bleak hillside. Perhaps the incessant winds that had the valley for their path could tell. In that little valley the endless hills had shut in Aroha and her nineteen years of life. She had been born in that unpainted house, had played the great dramas of her childhood beneath its shade, had 4 Tussock Land learnt to love and know each climbing spur, each entrancing gully, had followed the little creek up to the spring that gave it life, and down through all its wilful windings until a wire fence bridged it from bank to bank, and her father's property went no further. Yet she followed it further in her fancy, saw it wandering slowly among the creases of the hills, finding its blindfold way to the river of which it had vaguely and incessantly dreamed, moving undeviatingly towards the unseen sea. The girl was sometimes a little envious of the creek ; it could go so far, see so much, reach such undreamed-of goals. And she was shut in by those walls of hills — dead, lonely hills, untenanted save by the far-scattered, slow-browsing mobs of sheep, that looked in the distance like some strange efflorescence of grey flowers upon the tawny hillsides. So she was shut in between the earth and the low, windy sky. She made chums of the rabbiters' dogs, the quiet old horses that pulled the plough. To her the old shepherd who rode in for stores once a week from his whare at the top of the run was a traveller from the ends of the earth. And out of the sheer loneliness of a solitary childhood — for to a child there is always something hopelessly incomprehensible in the out- look of her parents — she made friends with John, the young station ploughman, who used to save his wages to buy tickets for Tattersall's racing sweeps in Australia, and who played at even-tide mightily upon the accordion. He was the only one in the station who was near her child's mind ; he was eighteen, and had not quite forgotten how to dream. So she had grown alone, save for the people on the run and her parents. Then had come the glorious yet terrible day when she left the run for a short stay with her aunt in Dunedin. She was Tussock Land 5 to see the Outside for the first time, at last to peer over the edge ! And oh ! how comfortable, how safe, had appeared the homestead that awful day ! She felt as she rose that morning — she had lain awake, wondering, all night — that if ever she got back to the run she would never more stir from it. The hills were her own ; they would never mock her. Her eyes were wet as she climbed into the dray that was to take her and her small carpet-bag to the nearest railway station, ten miles away. To her mother, standing, outwardly calm, at the back porch, Aroha waved a frenzied farewell. Then she had to hold on tightly, as to a chorus of barking collies and a guttural " Hed-oop !" from John who was the driver, the dray creaked and jangled through the ford of the creek and climbed the other side. Aroha strained her eyes upon the diminishing group of the home- stead, till at last a bluff, round which the road ran, shut it from sight. Then the tears came. It was a long silent ride in that springless dray to the wayside flag-station. John was never a con- versational youth; only on the accordion was he eloquent. And that day he seemed to the girl more taciturn than ever. To her half-terrified entreaties to be taken back he had no answer. On the station platform, as they waited for the train, he handed her ten shillings ; he wanted her to get him something for a present-like for a young lady of his acquaintance. And Aroha felt a sudden jealousy of the woman unknown for whom she was to choose this gift. She had always considered John as her exclusive property. Then the train had bustled in, and she had found herself thrust into a second-class carriage and in an agony of fear she had thrown her arms round John's 6 Tussock Land neck and kissed him. It was a kiss of fear, a cling- ing to the last familiar thing of her life ere she was flung out into the unknown. It was only long after the train had started that Aroha woke with a blush to the remembrance of the smile on the faces of the watching passengers at that impetuous good-bye. It was a wonderful fortnight that the gods gave Aroha in Dunedin. To the girl the beautiful little southern city, set at the head of its long, narrow, winding water-way, lying between the placid water of its harbour and the long rollers of the Pacific, ringed about by its broad swathe of purple bush and crowned with rugged hills, was the World, the Unknown — Sydney, London, Paris, Rome! But it was better to be home again, among the things that were hers. And since that brief visit to the city a year ago she had dwelt content within the circle of the hills. And when she had given John the lace collar she had bought for his envied love, he had handed it back to her, and gone suddenly out and chastised his dogs. II At last, with a little sigh that had no sorrow in it, Aroha turned again to the slope. Just a little way oft it was — that line of rustling" tussocks against the sky. This was her chosen playground as a child, her palace of fancies as a maid. Here she used to throw herself full-length among the tussocks and gaze for hours at the ever-scurrying clouds. She wove vague and entrancing romances for herself out of this wide expanse of hill and sky. The little clouds were the boats of the fleet carrying her dreams over the world, voyaging wide across new skies, encompassing unknown horizons. Or the tussocks became the restless, rustling waves of a yellow-grey ocean, over whose vast surges she and her fairy prince would sail and sail away, out of the prison of the hills, out anywhere so long as it was with him ! For there was always a fairy prince woven into the texture of her dreams. He was vague, heroic, wonderful. But above all he was strong. Some wondrous day he would appear, and snatch her quickly to his heart. She would resist his kisses — just a little, that he might hold her the closer — and his lips would storm her reluctance with their great eagerness. So she would lie in his arms in a very faintness of joy. And all the world would be theirs to do with as they would. He must be strong ; it was strength that her heart cried so passionately for. She was strong too ; but she was a woman. It was 7 8 Tussock Land a fine thing to be able to shape her life as she willed it, to master her fate, to decide, to rule. But for a woman there was a greater and a more gracious thing — to surrender all the strength that was in her in loving service to a personality richer, more puissant. She stood alone — she had stood alone all her young life — but her womanhood cried out at the unaccustomed burden. So she waited for the fairy prince — the splendid, confident, irresistible fairy prince that would snatch her up from this niggard little life and reeve her, delirious with a divine helplessness, away — away. And he would come — some day he would come. Of that her heart was assured. She could wait his coming with a woman's patience. At first the fairy prince took the appearance of John, the ploughman. He was yet little more than a boy, but he ploughed the straightest furrow in the district and had won medals at the annual ploughing contests at Mataura. His hut was close to the home- stead — a one-roomed shanty containing a stretcher bed with a mattress of sacking and a kerosene box that did duty as a chair, its walls and ceiling papered with illustrations from the Sydney Bulletin. On a shelf over the bunk stood his accordion, his only treasure, and an assortment of evil-smelling pipes. The back of the door was covered by a constantly augmenting collection of tickets that had failed to draw a prize at Tattersall's frequently recurring racing sweeps. But after a short reign as fairy prince John had failed to retain the throne. He was certainly strong ; and in the days when he was prince it was Aroha's deep delight to lie out in the fields and watch John at the plough. Up and down the big paddock, in lines that never wavered from straight- Tussock Land 9 ness, the team would go, and behind his triple shares the three steaming furrows would flow in black, even lines. So she would lie for hours, listening in a delicious reverie to the faint musical clank and creak of the harness, broken now and again by his half- intoned " Hed-oop ! " and " Who-aa, the little mare ! " and idly watching the sea-gulls busy over the freshly- turned earth. She wondered, as she watched the trail of gulls, that had flown a hundred miles inland to follow the plough, as they quarrelled with peevish cries, familiar about the furrows, whether she would ever repay their visits, cross the ocean that was their world. . . . But when the fairy prince put aside the solitude of the fields, when the mere kinship of life thrust these two together, he failed dismally to fill the role. John stood in such reverential awe of her — and all she wanted was to be loved ! He was heavy of face, slow of speech. His lips were sullen, not stern. When she sometimes slipped out to his whare after tea, she entered into no new realm of enchantment. She looked for the lover triumphant, and found only the ploughman abashed. Once she suddenly kissed him : it seemed to John a profanation of her lips. So, reluctantly — for she was very lonely — she deposed him from his proud place ; and though the poor fellow struggled dimly to comprehend the reasons of his dismissal, and continued to under- study the splendid part she had once allotted to him, her imagination made the dismissal final. In such important things as a girl's dreams, a mere side issue like John does not count. But it was not long before the vacant throne was filled. This new claimant to the realm was a state school-teacher from Pukerau, where, day after day, he gathered into the little schoolhouse by the main road io Tussock Land a dozen children from the neighbouring township and taught them English with a strong Scotch accent. Aroha had met him at a dance given in the Hathaways' new woolshed. He had worn an absurd suit of black with quaint little tails and a very niggard allowance of waistcoat ; but his dancing was to the girl like the revelation of a new sense. He was a tall, sallow youth, with large hands, wide ears and a bulging forehead. In after life he became a cabinet minister. After supper he had said some things to Aroha in an intonation that made her imagine that he was re- peating a school lesson ; but the words were beautiful. It was like a song that was too perfect to be sung. She had asked him what it was, and he had said, " Poetry." Till then she had imagined that poetry was a thing in books in short lines with a lot of capital letters in the wrong places. So she had put him on the vacant throne and worshipped him afar ; but they had never met again. Once she rode to Pukerau and called at the school- room ; but she was met by a cheerful young school- mistress with spectacles and a city blouse, and had been too confused to ask where her knight-errant had gone. Aroha was sure that he was strong; when he danced with her his strength had almost frightened her. But it was difficult work to continue loyally to adore when the prince never visited his dominions. So he, too, was cast out of her dreams. Then there was a superbly-gloved youth she had met in the train on her way home. He had got her a cup of tea with an infinite grace. He had a moustache and smoked cigars. But he was far from her thoughts ; he dwelt in a land impossible, of which she had caught bewildered glances in the Family Herald. With every wish to compass it she could Tussock Land 1 1 never see herself in his arms. And for the girl it was now necessary that her fairy prince should be sufficiently human to desire to embrace her. Once she had been content to be put on a pedestal and worshipped ; but with her approaching womanhood newer and more insistent desires stirred in her. Un- consciously her whole being cried out for love. And, after all, there was no fairy prince ! So she went back to her dreams and revelled in her rich imagination. For the present she must weave her own romances ; but she felt assured that one day a reality, more glorious than all her desires, would step into her dreams and carry her off to heaven. Her life would be but one strand in a woven web of splendour. And she knew exactly the way he would come. She had learnt that — oh ! so long ago ! Over the saddle towards which she was now slowly moving, a few hundred paces off, he would suddenly come, riding up the long slope that led to this narrow ridge from the valleys and hollows of the great world out- side. So on every one of her many visits to the top of the valley she would pause a while in a sudden, delicious, half-feigned terror, and then run to the ridge with an equally delicious, half-feigned expecta- tion, only to find ever the same picture — a yellow sweep of valley running down into a nest of level land lost among a monotony of broad-shouldered hills, and against the horizon a jagged line of glisten- ing, snow-clad peaks. And though her keen eyes sought ever for his figure, never on any day came the fairy prince, sturdily breasting the long tussock slope. Yet this afternoon, as Aroha, under the influence of her childish dreams, quickened her pace, and 1 2 Tussock Land almost ran toward the narrow line of wind-swept tussocks, she had in her heart the same delicious, half-feigned certainty of surprise. She reached the top of the ridge and gazed beyond. And, careering swiftly towards her, swept a terrified horse — riderless. Ill 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 con- viction 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, 13 14 Tussock Land the solitary hawk paused on wide wings watch- ing. 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 seven- teenth 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 aerial 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 eye- brows ran toward each other, not meeting but ending with a wonderful upward ripple that gave her face a Tussock Land 1 5 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. 1 6 Tussock Land " 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." Tussock Land 17 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 B 1 8 Tussock Land 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 happi- ness 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. . . . " 1 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 Tussock Land 19 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. 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 after- noon, 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 20 Tussock Land 21 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 Hathavvays' 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- 22 Tussock Land 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 un- interesting 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 work- manship 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 mere 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 everyone of these meres has a history and an authen- ticity 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. Tussock Land 23 t: 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 walk, her 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 ! " 24 Tussock Land 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 un- quenchable. 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 re- building 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 Tussock Land 25 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 circum- stances. 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. Hine 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 civilisa- tion 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 Hine 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 ex- perience 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 hill- side — 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 realisa- tion of all that had eluded him. She was a type 26 Tussock Land 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. Tussock Land 27 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 " Good- night." 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 con- versation — 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 move- ments 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 28 Tussock Land 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 stand- ing 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. . . . V AROHA was the offspring of a new country, the child of a virgin soil. Between her generation and that of her father there was a great barrier. For she had been born in New Zealand. He looked back with a fond pride and an inherent satisfaction to the old land that had borne him. In England he had left half himself. His memories were of that little island of the North ; he was the child of the past, the inheritor of history. England's traditions had so wrapped themselves about his personality that in this new land he could not shake them off. Nay ; he was incapable of wishing to disencumber himself of his traditions. His early training, his inherited outlook coloured all his life. At times he felt a dumb rage that this strange far-south colony, in which he was ever an exile, should so resemble England. The very likenesses that sometimes showed themselves mocked him with their inherent dissimilarity. He had been transplanted merely — not uprooted. He was the product of generations of his race ; in him their characteristics, rudely flung to the other side of the globe, heroically persisted. Under these new skies in which glittered a chaos of unfamiliar stars, he continued to grow, to develop ; but the fruits were not the fruits of the new soil — merely a sickly maturing of the process begun under different auspices a hemisphere away. lie looked yearningly back across the wide stretch 29 30 Tussock Land of sea that lay between his own land and this : his heart had never crossed the tropics. To him England was the "Home" that so many colonists unthinkingly name a land they have never seen, probably never will see. Here he was decentred, set upon the outer fringe of the world. At night he looked apprehensively out upon the other side of the universe. His heart sickened when he realised how far he was from Charing Cross, how impossible it was that he would ever stroll down the Strand. Distance stood at the gate like an implacable angel of the flaming sword. He was outlawed from civilisation, set in a land that was not even finished. But Aroha knew England not even in memories. Here was her birthplace, here her home. To her father's stories of his home she listened almost as to a traveller's tale. It was all very interesting, very quaint and strange ; but what had it to do with her? Maoriland was hers — aland familiar and affine. She was born here ; here she would live and die. To her the little fenced grave on the wind-swept hillside seemed sadly incongruous. Her father at last lay in a land strange and hostile to him. She wondered sometimes whether he was really at rest. She pictured herself buried in some far land, perhaps in that unknown England, and knew she would not be content. But this wide, wild tussock land was hers. It knew and accepted her. She was part of this wide sweep of hill and valley, she belonged to this great domain of creek and flat and gully and swamp. The scour of the ever-hurrying winds, the outpour of the ever-brilliant sun had made her what she was ; something of the wind and the sun and the keen, quick air was in her soul. She did not look back. It was interesting, as Tussock Land 31 books of history were interesting, to hear her father speak of his ancestors, to picture the long, unchang- ing, continuous life of his ancient family. But they belonged to another race. They were all dead, buried in a land she had never seen, scarcely desired to see. That story has come to its last chapter; those ancestors of hers had finished their great drama. She knew that if they were able to learn of her they would not approve of her, would not even recognise her as a descendant of their greatness. Their story belonged to England. In that little fenced grave on the alien hillside all the long accumulations of history, all those glorious legends and high ideals were ignominiously buried. That was where that long- hoarded greatness had come at last to rest. She had the present about her, she looked ahead. In this new land history had hardly begun to take tangible form. Her mother's people, the Maoris, had their legends, their mythology; but they had not impressed them upon the land. The brown con- querors of this world-forgotten island group had built only in wood, and already their mark upon the land was beginning to fade. Their wonderfully- carved whares could not long survive destruction, and already the art of carving was dying out. And though the race was not dying out, its impress upon history was destined to become fainter. Its destiny was intermarriage with the pakeha — and though thus it would bestow upon the New Zealand race of the future a physique and a vitality that belong to primitive things, a gift that would carry the new race far — as a people the brown Maori must cease — submerged beneath the greater number of the whites. But in that most impalpable thing, language, the Maori had builded better than in his carven wood. 32 Tussock Land He had made his inalienable impress upon the land by the great store of names with which he had dowered these islands. Every hill, every gully, every spur, every creek, every fishing-ground, every tribal limit, had its musical Maori name — to the untrained eye a little terrifying, but very liquid, very soft and sweet upon the tongue. The Italian skies of this southern land seemed to have given an Italian wealth of vowels to the speech of its people. And every name was a poem, the rude nature-poems of a primitive people, that reached in one swift word to the utter heart of things. So over this new country history brooded but vaguely, a haunting sense of the things that had been, of stories past and irrevocable. To Aroha it was yet a land of newness. To the girl's sight a cemetery was a rare thing ; the little scattered burial-places of the settlers were few and far-hidden. In this unstoried place a tombstone was an anachronism. It seemed as if the people of this new land were almost ashamed of their dead. Aroha had never seen an old building. In her districts the churches were but wooden erections that, during the week-days, served their main use as schoolrooms or entertainment halls. Even the stone churches in Dunedin were new. Time had not ventured to lay his transfiguring hand on them. The ivy was just beginning to climb their walls. It was difficult to be religious in a land that knew not Antiquity with her finger on her lips. So Aroha looked forward to the vague promise of the future. She began another race, she belonged to a newer people, a nation that had no past. In her veins was the blood of the English ; but she was thrilled by the ichor of that other race. Hers were those brown warriors of the past, adventuring in Tussock Land 33 their great canoes thousands of leagues over unknown waters, a Columbus race ever questing for lands unseen, a nation of Alexanders tired of the long unchanging tropic peace of Hawaiki, stirred by the thought of new worlds to conquer. For, leaving the known and the familiar behind, they had set out in their great canoes and plunged deeply into the mysterious South, seeking vague lands in the for- gotten regions of the earth, drawn irresistibly on- wards by legends dimly whispered and rumours borne upon the strenuous winds of the Pacific. So they had ventured and voyaged deeper and deeper into the unknown, till at last their keels came to rest in the white sand of the beaches of New Zealand. But the island group was not untenanted. A weak and peaceful race they found already in possession, but before the onslaught of this fierce race of con- querors the ranks of the primitive Moriori melted away. It was surely a deep instinct for racial preserva- tion that had prompted this tropical race to leave the lotus islands of the Pacific and dive into the colder waters of the South, sternly seeking a ruder, healthier home. It was only by that spartan plunge that the race could regain its strength and hardiness after too long a sojourn in the soft ease of the tropics. They had voyaged far, that race of brown Ulysses, and they had found their Fortunate Isles. From India, cradle of nations, they were said to have come in the days when the Himalaya tableland sent forth its nations to people the world ; and, drifting gradually out into the Pacific and leaving behind as they slowly wended from island to island the cooler and less adventurous spirits of their race, they had pressed ever onwards, eastwards and southwards, conquering and colonizing as they drove, until the drifting ice- C 34 Tussock Land bergs of the Antarctic fixed the barrier to their quest. The blood of this people was in Aroha's veins, their story in her heart. She knew the tale of her mother's tribe : back and back the generations went, name after name famous in Maori history she could recite, until at last she reached the founder of her tribe, the famous chief who had commanded one of the five great canoes that had headed the first migration of the Maoris to these dimly-divined shores. She knew that great chiefs name, the name of the canoe in which he came, of the very beach upon which its double keel stranded. But beyond that history said nothing and legends but dimly whispered. And beyond that Aroha did not care to go. She was a New Zealander. This land and she were kin. The Maori had made it his own by the might of his arm, and after him had come a stronger race, and to this pallid, strange people, though not till after a worthy fight, in his turn the Maori had given way. In Aroha these two long lines of conquerors fused and blended. She stood at the beginning of a new race, alert for the possibilities of the ever-widening future. A hemisphere separated her from her father, a dying history cut her off from her mother. She began another race, she belonged to a newer people, a nation that had no past. VI Next morning King's ankle was sufficiently re- covered 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 feel- ing 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 35 36 Tussock Land 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 pre- tending, was upon the throne. Tussock Land 37 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 after- noons 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 a