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Born near Gisborne, New Zealand, 13th December, 1891.
Died at London, 13th January, 1925.
A volunteer for the
Brief as was his literary career, its output has brought laughter to many, tears to some, and enjoyment to all his readers. Several of his stories were issued serially, but this is the first to be published in book form, and it is believed that
The author of “
For a few months he worked as a deck hand on New Zealand coastal and intercolonial steamers, but finding monotony where he had looked for adventure he forsook steam for sail. Unlike many of a like temperament he was a good correspondent, thus enabling his family to trace his erratic course from port to port as the ships upon which he signed ploughed their way from the Americas to China, from China to Norway, from Norway to Continental and British ports, and finally to the blue Pacific and home again. While roaming over the globe in windjammers such as the Cambeskenneth and the Wiscombe Park he was absorbing memories which were to stand him in good stead in later years.
Frank was in San Francisco, and twenty-three years of age, when news reached him of the outbreak of war. He at once obtained his discharge, boarded the trans-continental train, embarked for England, and offered for the O pal as a gunner. The O pal formed a unit in the Destroyer Flotillas cruising the stormy North Sea. Amongst other stirring adventures it was the first ship to reach the scene of Hampshire struck a mine off the Orkney Islands. Letters treasured by his mother describe how the bitter weather and frozen seas hindered the work of rescue, and tell of the swimmers who struggled awhile and sank before a boat could be lowered.
Still as a gunner, O pal was in the thick of the fight, and our gunner's letters give a vivid account of the terrors, anxiety and heroism of that deadly encounter. It was shortly after the Battle of Jutland that he was seriously injured by being crushed between a buoy and his ship. Weary months were spent in hospital, his life wavering in the balance as a sturdy constitution fought against the weakening effects of the injury and subsequent pneumonia. He recovered sufficiently to be invalided home to New Zealand, but unfortunately one lung was permanently affected. There followed long months of treatment at the
A life in the open was a necessity, so a-farming he went, purchasing an eighty-acre farm near the slopes of
As he worked, so he wrote. He enjoyed social life, but found greater enjoyment when employed during long evenings with pen and paper, as he set down, with lively imagination and that saving sense of humour, his stories of New Zealand farms and farmers. It is believed the verdict of his countrymen will be that not only has he proved his ability to write a good story, but that his work has that elusive quality of “style,” justly entitling it to the claim of good literature.
On the disposal of his farm
When I came home from the Great War, I dropped into the biggest thing in land booms that New Zealand had ever experienced.
I pottered about for a week or two, renewing old friendships, and getting back into civilian routine, and then I got stung by the land bug myself, and commenced to worry about getting a farm.
Everyone was land mad, that year, and that's the only way to express it. Lawyers, clerks, carpenters, tradesmen—anyone with a nest egg saved up—they all started rushing about inspecting farms. It was a great old time for land agents; and farmers who had given up all hope of ever selling their miserable, poverty stricken sections took fresh heart, and unloaded on to ignorant, cheery optimists, who couldn't have made a success of good places, let alone the places they generally fell for.
I started in buying two papers a day, so as not to miss any of the land-agent's advertisements, and when I wasn't tearing about Taranaki in some agent's car, inspecting farms for sale, I was busy at home writing to the owners of places advertised, and demanding particulars. It was a thrilling experience, almost as exciting as gambling, because a man never knew what he was going to see, when he started off.
There was one place in particular that took my fancy. It read in the agent's advertisement as:
50 acres, all in grass. All plowable, subdivided into four paddocks. Two-roomed house and four bailed cowshed on property. Will milk twenty cows. Only £45 per acre.
That place struck me as a nice, snug little one-man farm, just the place for me, and I visited the agent; who had the selling of it, and asked for an inspection.
It was well up on the slopes of Mt. Egmont, when we got there, and about as big a nightmare of a farming proposition as any man ever saw. And yet there was nothing untrue about the advertisement. The four bail cowshed was there, all right, only the roof had blown off it a few years previous to my visit. The two-roomed house was two-roomed, sure enough, the partition being made of sacks sewn together, and nailed across. Everything else about the place was ripe and rotten, and the “all ploughable” consisted of acres of flat, water-logged swamp. It could be ploughed, without a doubt, after a fellow had spent a few years, and a few hundred pounds, in draining and stumping it.
The most attractive part about the farm was the terms. Only a £100 cash was required, and as that was about the extent of my exchequer, I snapped the place at once, and paid down a deposit on the spot. I didn't want anyone else to slip in, and get the place over my head, by offering another pound an acre, say. But I needn't have been in such a hurry about planking down that deposit. I found out afterwards, that that section had been in half the land-agent's hands in Taranaki, for upwards of ten years, and none of them had ever succeeded in making a deal until I appeared upon the scene.
However, that didn't worry me. I was just as proud of that farm as if it had been the most model place in the Dominion. My relations all shook their heads sadly, when they heard the news. Their idea was, that I should try a year as a farm hand, first, in order to satisfy myself that the life would suit me, but I knew best, of course. Anyone could farm—look at the mugs you see making a success of it all over the district. If they could run a farm, so could I.
I bought about ten shillings worth of agricultural literature, so as to be well up in the scientific side
The next worry was to get stock, but I found that an easy enough proposition because I applied to the Government, and got them to finance me under the Returned Soldiers' Settlement Act. I bought 18 heifers, a horse, dray, three milk cans, and other farm chattels and goods, and got the money at five per cent. through the Government, whereas in all probability ten per cent. would have been the rate, had I been financed by some private firm.
This was my first attempt at farming, and although I put on a brave face, I didn't feel half as confident as I pretended to.
The day I took possession, about fourteen neighbours, all sizes and ages, from boys to old men, dropped in at different times, to see if I wanted any help. It wasn't going to be a lonely locality, that was one comfort.
One old man, in particular, showed himself very friendly. He dropped in and yarned for an hour, and was so nice and kind, and sympathetic, that I let him know I hadn't been farming before.
“Well” said he, “I'm Bill Treadwell. Anyone round here will tell you about me. If there's anything you want to know, at any time, just come to me. I'm not too proud to show a man; we all had to begin.”
He gave me some very encouraging conversation, and as soon as he left me, he dashed over to his next door neighbour, and predicted three things to happen to me, within the next six months. One, that I would get horned to death by one of my new heifers, when I started breaking them in. Two, that I'd make such a ghastly failure of farming that I'd chuck my hand in, in sheer disgust; and three, that if either of those guesses didn't come off, the Government would kick me off the place to save their money, and put a competent man in my place.
None of these predictions came to pass, but although, as the months rolled by, his chances of proving a true prophet grew less and less, old Bill never wholly gave up hope. If anyone mentioned my name he would shake his head and say: “Umph'mm! He hasn't got on his feet yet,” as if he knew something but didn't quite like to tell it, and the person addressed would go away fully convinced that I was on the verge of bankruptcy, and only hanging on to the place through the tolerance of my creditors.
Everybody in the township knew exactly how much a year I took off the place, how much interest I paid, what my rates ran into, and all the rest of my business. Mr. Treadwell saw to that, although where he got the inside information from, I don't know. As he had similar incorrect information about every other farmer for five miles around, it didn't really matter.
The first thing I did, on taking possession of the farm, was to repair the cowshed. The two-roomed shanty seemed snug enough, especially as I was not used to wallowing in luxury. One half of it I used as a living room, because of the open fireplace, and behind the mouldy old sack partition was my bed chamber.
As I had spent all my money in getting the farm, I had to dispense with furniture until I was in a position to buy it. I made a bed out of rails from the bush, nailing sacking across from side to side. For a mattress, I filled two sacks with sweet hay, and that answered quite as well. My table was a big packing case I begged off the township storekeeper, and my chairs were two smaller boxes, got from the same source.
All day long I bustled about, full of importance, and when evening fell, I lit up my fire and made things snug for the night. It was a new sensation, to sit all alone, in front of a roaring log fire, after washing up the tea things, and dream sweet dreams of affluence.
Sometimes I'd get a piece of paper and a pencil, and work out how much my cows were going to produce in the season, and how much money I would have saved up in a year.
I've kept some of those calculations out of curiosity; at least they serve to show what a wonderful thing optimism is. I don't think I was ever happier than when I was sitting of an evening in that cosy, fire-lit bach, building castles in the air, and saying to myself, “My own boss! No one to give me an order; no one to criticise what I do!”
I was wrong there, however, because I found plenty of people ready to criticise. One or two used to drop in on me every day, in order to give me good sound advice, and to explain why the way I was doing a job was wrong.
There was one thing about my domicile that aroused my curiosity, during my first week of occupation, and that was a big hook screwed into the ceiling of the bedroom. I used to lie in bed smoking, before blowing out the candle, and wonder why anyone had bothered to put a hook there. It was right above my head, and I could tell it had never been used for hanging a swinging lamp, because there was no sign of smoke or heat around it. I gave it up, at length, but one night it commenced to rain cats and dogs, and then I found out what previous inhabitants had used the hook for.
When I go to sleep, I sleep, and don't just indulge in fitful cat naps, and it takes something unusual to awaken me, until my time arrives for getting up. I got something unusual, that night.
It started off with a pleasant little dream. I was lolling idly in a soft, mossy dell, listening to a bird singing, and watching a lovely maid sprinkling water on to a patch of wild flowers close by. She was perfection! I wondered if she saw me, and was just going to sit up and say “Hullo!” when she turned to me and said:
“Lie still. Now I'll attend to you.” She threw a handful of water at me, and we both laughed when it caught me under the chin and ran down my neck.
“Now I dare you to sit up, until I've given you your share,” said that beautiful girl, with an arch look.
She splashed me again, and again I sniggered like a fool, and kept still. Then she suddenly lifted up a 200 gallon tank of water, that I hadn't noticed she had there, and poured it all over me. What do you call that, for a fool of a dream?
I woke up with a jolt, to find the room full of water, and a steady stream pouring out of the seams, alongside the hook in the ceiling, and cascading on to my chest. The first two or three times that fair creature had splashed me, must have been when the water was first breaking through, and if I'd only sat up and taken notice at once, I should probably have been in time to hop out and drag the bed out of the way.
In the good old days, when other people had inhabited the house, they had used that hook to hang a bucket on, but the hole in the roof must have grown bigger, since those times, and before I could live in that shack I had to put some new sheets of iron on the outside.
That was my first lesson on the doubtful blessing of being entirely my own boss. You see, I had to fix the roof up myself. If I'd been working for anyone else, and such a thing had happened, look what a fine show of indignation I could have worked up. I could have threatened to leave, or perhaps had two or three days off in bed, with a chill, after such an experience as that. Instead, as it was my own house, I had to go into town and buy corrugated iron for roofing, just at a time when I couldn't afford to. When I told Mr. Treadwell about it, next morning, he looked surprised and said:
“Didn't you know the roof leaked? Why, I could have told you that; it's been like that for years and years.”
I was taking the dray into town, the next day, to bring out the new roofing, so he said he would go in with me; it would save him using his own horse. The town of Stratford was some seven or eight miles away, and we rigged a plank across the dray to serve as a seat, and had a pleasant drive in.
Mr. Treadwell was well worth his ride. He gave me the history and personal character of every neighbour for miles around. I began to fear that I had settled in a dubious locality; it seemed that I was surrounded with a whole lot of people for neighbours, who by rights ought to have been in jail. There was Sam Dunn. Somebody ought to tell the police about him. Sam used to hook his horse on to big trees, when he was logging up, and then hammer it over the head with a batten, when it couldn't pull the load. When I heard that, I took a dislike to Sam Dunn that it took me three years to get over.
Then there was Peter Watson. Peter came home drunk once every week, and made his poor wife milk the herd of twenty-four cows by herself; and then about 8 p.m. he'd arise from off the sofa and go to market because the poor woman hadn't cooked a hot tea for him. I decided to keep Peter at arm's length. after hearing that.
All the other farmers around had their little peculiarities. It dawned on me that I was in a mighty queer neighbourhood, to say the best for it, and my heart went out to friendly, benevolent old Treadwell. I would cling to his goodwill and friendship—he was all right, anyway.
In Stratford we ran into another neighbour named Andrews, and the three of us went into the Club Hotel for a drink. Andrews called for whisky, and Mr. Treadwell gave me a nudge. I didn't understand what it was for until we were driving home again that evening, and then I was informed that whenever Bob Andrews went on to whisky, it meant that he was hopelessly intoxicated. He never drank whisky
“Most probably,” said Mr. Treadwell, “he won't come home to-night. He might even get locked up.” The idea seemed to tickle his fancy, and he gave a satisfied chuckle.
“By Jove!” said I, “If I'd known he was like that, I'd have stuck to him, and put him on the road home, only he seemed sober enough to me.”
That was one of the maxims of the Army. Never desert a friend or acquaintance, if he seems in any danger through too much liquor, and I'd always played up to it.
“Pooh!” said Mr. Treadwell, “He wouldn't thank you. As like as not he'd take it as an insult. You won't feel like that when you've known Bob as long as I have.”
We stopped once, on the road back, while my new friend introduced me to Mrs. Sam Dunn. She was chasing home some Indian Runner ducks, but found time to pause for a chat.
“I saw Bob Andrews in town to-day,” said Mr. Treadwell significantly, after I had been presented to the lady.
“Oh!” said she, expectantly.
“Yes,” continued he, sadly. “You know! Spirits!”
By her shocked expression I saw that if she didn't know, she thought she did, and then we drove on.
All this passed out of my mind, as soon as I was home, and away from Treadwell, but it was to be brought back to me on many an occasion, in after days. In fact, some of the things I learned during that drive still linger, although I have disproved them time and again.
The neighbours about me were very friendly, and during the few weeks before the milking season got into swing, I visited about a good deal. If it hadn't been for the knowledge I had of all their little failings,
When I mentioned this to Mr. Treadwell, one day, he grunted, and then said: “Ah, Mark! That's just it. You see, they think no one knows.”
He seemed to think that settled the argument and accounted for everything.
There was one thing that seemed to give all these good people away, however, and that was the universal dislike they all entertained for my friend. They seldom said anything against old Tready, as they called him, but I could feel it in my boots that they didn't really care for him, at heart.
When the first of my heifers came in, work and worry commenced, as far as I was concerned. I had a nice new ledger, all ruled off, being determined to run the place on strict business lines, and I devoted a page to each cow. I entered the first as Bella. Bella seemed a very appropriate name for that heifer, because she hung about the house and shed for a week, answering her calf, every time it called to her.
I had the calf shut up in a shed close to the house, and the two of them would keep inquiring about each other all night long, at the rate of a call every thirty seconds. They nearly drove me silly before the week was up.
Then three more heifers calved on the same day, and one of them put me through a thin place in a barberry hedge, just because I went over to admire her calf. This delayed the work quite a while, and I had to go home and change my clothes, because when I'd slipped through that hedge I'd been careless enough not to notice three barbed wires that were buried in the barberry. It took me two hours, with a looking glass and a needle, extracting thorns from different parts of my anatomy, before I was fit to take the field again. That experience taught me a lesson, and before going to examine any more calves, I took care to pick out a thin place in a near-by hedge as a getaway, in case of necessity. Some of the heifers took no notice of me whatever, and seemed actually to be relieved, when I took possession of their offspring, but none of them were to be trusted, and it was always advisable to play safe.
My farm had been eaten out pretty bare before I took it over, and I began to look forward anxiously to the spring growth. The heifers were averaging about ten pounds of milk a day, with a 4 lb. of butter per hundred pounds of milk-fat content, and it didn't require much of a brain to work out the fact that they were short of feed. In my calculations I had estimated each cow to start off with twenty pound of milk a day, at the least, but I had to readjust a good many of my ideas, before that first season was over.
By the middle of September all my eighteen heifers were in milk, and I was rushing about from 4.30 a.m., until after dark every night. Being only a poor milker, it used to take me quite three hours, morning and evening, to put my herd through, and a three-mile drive to the nearest factory didn't improve things for me. By the time I got back from the factory every morning, my appetite had worn off. Sometimes I would cook a breakfast, but more often than not I would have a slice of bread and butter, and a mug of milk, and then go out and carry on with the work.
The first year of farming was to me a perfect nightmare. I know too much to let work get me bustled now—easy and calm does the job best, I've found—but I was green in those days. Most of the time I was racing against time, and if there's anything in life more wearing than that, I've yet to find it. If I slept in five minutes in the morning, that five minutes haunted me all day long. The more I hustled, trying to make it up, the further behind I seemed to get. If I'm half-an-hour behind now, I just amble along easily and finish up half-an-hour later. That's one wholesome lesson farming has taught me—never try and beat the clock.
It's a funny thing how some days start off on oiled wheels and roll smoothly along, until, before a man realises it, he finds himself inside frying his steak or sausages over a nice fire. Then look at other days that ought to be the same.
I recollect one morning in particular. I arose as cheerful and happy as a bird. After a nice cold water sluice, to get the sleep out of my eyes, I went whistling over to the cowshed, and found that one of my new milk-cans had sprung a leak during the night, and all my night before's milk had run away. I looked at it with emotion for awhile, and then said to myself: “Never mind, Mark, old boy, these things are sent to try you.” I still whistled, as I mustered the cows into the yard, determined not to let a little thing like a leaky milk can put me out. As I milked each cow in the shed, I used to pour the milk into two kerosene tins I kept up in a corner, and when they were full I would tote them out and empty them into the milk can. It saved making a trip for every cow.
This morning I had just got one tin full when I went out to bail up my quietest cow. She came in chewing her cud, then fixed her eye on that tin of milk with a thoughtful, puzzled expression. A sudden recollection of happy, calfhood days must have struck her, I suppose, because instead of going into the bail,
When I took up farming for my living I adopted as a motto “Coolly and calmly does it.” That was the first time I forgot to live up to it. I hit the peacefully drinking Sarah with the shed shovel, and she came back to earth with a jolt. The shovel handle broke, and Sarah turned round, with her head still in the kerosene tin, knocked me down, and trampled over the top. Then she rushed out into the yard and tore round and round, bumping the empty tin against the rest of my timid herd, until the excitement became so intense that one of them fell through the fence and almost tore a leg off.
After things had quietened down a little I took a fresh grip on the situation and thought of my motto. I milked some more cows, and filled the remaining tin —the one Sarah had gone nosing about was out in the yard, all flattened out. Then, when I had my pail full of milk as well, I went outside to empty them both into the milk can. As I climbed up on to the milk stand the stains of the last night's milk met my eye, and I remember thinking what a grand thing it was to be a philosopher, and able to view small troubles with quiet fortitude. “Many a man,” I thought, “would have a nasty liver over a thing like that, and here am I as cool as an iceberg.”
Just as I got to that part of the ruminations I trod on the slimy, milk-soaked planks of the can-stand, and my feet shot from under me.
I sailed gracefully through the air, a bucket of milk in each hand, and landed with a sickening thud on a patch of broken stone I had spalled up a week before, for metalling in front of the stand. After that I gave up trying to live up to the motto for the rest of that day. I couldn't do a single thing right the whole day long, and when night-time arrived I was just about fit for an asylum. I lit my fire, put some
“Aha!” thought I, “I've finished with bad luck for to-day, anyhow!”
Swearing at things all day long had made me as hungry as a hunter, and when the steak was just about cooked I left it a moment in order to hunt up the pepper canister. My back was hardly turned when I heard a noise like a powder explosion, and I whipped around to find the whole fireplace enveloped in flames. The fat in the pan had caught alight, and the fierce flame had set fire to the chimney as well. I had an anxious half-hour running from the tank to the fireplace with buckets of water. The side of the house began to smoke and curl before I got the fire subdued—my chimney was made of tin—and after the show was over I went in and investigated the frying pan. Anyone could have had a hundred guesses without guessing correctly what the blotch in the bottom of the frying pan was meant to represent. The whole room was smothered in soot and ashes, and full of smoke, and the floor was an inch deep in dirty water. I had to set to work and do some spring cleaning before I found the knife, fork, and plate I had set out on the table, and then I dusted the ashes off the loaf and made a meal of bread and butter.
A day like that has its uses. It shows a man how well off he is when things are running smoothly. A week on end of that kind of thing would finish up with suicide. It's all very well for people to say “keep calm,” no matter what happens. One cold, blustery morning I was reaching up to put the blinkers on the horse, and the dog chose that particular moment to take a nip at the animal's heels. It took me two solid hours to run the horse down after that, besides getting nearly killed at the time. I defy anyone to keep cool, calm, and collected, when that sort of thing happens to him.
The best part of farm life is the rest after tea. Stick a big log on the fire, fill the pipe, and sit back and fight over the battles of the day. It doesn't require an armchair for comfort, an old box will do if you've been working all day. It doesn't require an armchair for comfort, an old box will do if you've been working all day. And it's surprising how hopeful and cheery a man will feel if he works hard and doesn't worry. Every month my milk cheque would come to hand, perhaps less than half what I had estimated at the beginning of the season, and yet I kept on looking ahead and hoping something would turn up and even things for me. Nothing ever did, but that didn't prevent me from continuing to hope on.
I've noticed the same tendency in other folks. There's old Andy Brown, for instance. He has a farm down the road a bit from my place, and a family of about ten to keep. Every year he's behind in his interest, and the holders of the mortgage postpone so much, and have it added to the principal, and there it is, growing bigger and bigger every year. The only reason they do it is because Andy is a toiler, and puts in solid permanent improvements, in the way of stumping and draining. Andy's trouble is that the place is too small to support his large family, but he refuses to see it. He jogs along, optimistic, and full of plans for the future, and even talks of paying off the mortgage as soon as he has the place properly knocked into shape. What will probably happen is that as soon as he has the place fully developed, the mortgagee will sell him up, in order to get the direct benefit of Andy's years of toil and privation, and Andy will go out without a bean. But it's no use trying to tell that to Andy, he'd refuse to believe it; the only thing to do is to listen to the old chap expounding his hopes and plans, and hope he has luck and weathers the storm.
When I sat, of an evening, planning and dreaming, I pinned my hopes of bigger milk cheques on the spring growth, for a start. Once the grass really started
My farm was poor, the pasture thin and run out. It never even looked like spring, on my place, and as soon as I had digested that fact, I switched my hopes from spring growth and pinned them on to the summer flush of grass. Even the poorest farm should have an abundance of feed, during the summer months.
It was a shock to find that my heifers commenced to go down in milk, in the summer, in spite of the “summer flush,” but after a day or two of worry I took heart again. I had put in three acres of soft turnips for autumn feed, and I pinned my faith on the turnips. I relied on them to pull me up and make my herd milk well through the autumn months. By the end of February the grass began to disappear off the section as if melted away by magic, and if it hadn't been for the three acres of turnips, my cows would have starved to death. Instead of making them milk, it simply kept them alive, and every morning, down at the factory, I used to take the lids off the milk cans, before drawing under the hoist, in order to let some of the turnipy smell away. About every other morning the factory manager would hop down into my cart, with a do or die air, and stick his nose into the cans and sniff discontentedly.
I admit myself the smell was enough to knock a man down—it was far more pronounced than the actual turnips—but I used to put on a surprised expression and say, “Turnipy smell! That's queer! Can't understand it.”
Sometimes I got away with the bluff, but once or twice I had to cart my milk home again, and it came down to this, in the end. Either I didn't feed out turnips, and my cows starved to death, or I fed out, and the factory refused to take the milk. I was glad when that first season was over. But I guess I'm getting along a bit too fast with the yarn—lots of water ran under the bridge before I got to my autumn turnips.
As I have said, the people about were friendly, and I often used to drop in on one or another of them, for tea and a quiet evening's entertainment. And that was how I first met Alice Arnold.
I made up my mind, when I was at the War, that if I got back safe I would settle down on a farm, marry, and then live happily ever after.
Well, I soon got the farm, but before I'd been on it six months it began to dawn on me that I'd better postpone the marrying for a few years, until I could see my way clear to support a wife. The farm as it was would hardly support me, so I resolved to buckle to for a year or two until I had it knocked into shape. After that was accomplished would be the time to think of going courting. Never having experienced the grand passion, I disposed of the subject quite offhandedly, but I was to learn my little lesson later on.
Some men pick their wife as they would pick a horse. They sum up all the different qualities—temper, style, efficiency, personality, weigh them against any faults they know of, and then make their decision. I'm not so sure, on thinking the matter over, that that isn't as good a way as any, but it's not my way. My ideas on the subject were very different. I always felt that if a man bided his time and refused to flirt with every pretty face that came along and smiled on him, some day the ideal girl would arrive on the scene, and of course, then was the time to get moving.
In Alice Arnold I thought I saw my ideal; I decided to “get moving,” but the very things I counted as in my favour were to go against me. My inexperience with the fair sex proved the greatest drawback of all. I couldn't flirt; I was too shy to talk with ease; I couldn't even snatch a kiss if the light went out suddenly. Gee! When I think back, I was a greenhorn!
Peter Watson may have arrived home once in his life, and made his wife milk the cows by herself while he slept off a drunken spree on the sofa, but if he ever did it was before my time. I can only say that I always found him to be as quiet and sober a man as any I ever knew, and his wife thinks there is nobody like him. Mrs. Watson was a plump, voluble woman of about forty-five, and mothered me up from the first day of our meeting.
I never went to visit the Watsons but what I had a cake, or a batch of scones, or something edible to take home with me.
“We know what you bachelors are,” Mrs. Watson would say. “You don't look after yourselves. Ah! Mr. Woodford, you should get married.”
All the ladies used to rub that into me the first year. My reply was generally a sickly grin, and perhaps some inane remark to the effect that “the girls wouldn't have me,” or “I couldn't afford to.” I was always inclined to be a little bit shy with womenfolk, and this kind of jollying along used to give me creeps down the back. I think they knew that, too; it gave zest to the hint, I expect. The day I met Alice Arnold at the Watson's house, if I'd only known there was a strange girl stopping there at the time, I most certainly wouldn't have paid my visit. Of course I'm different now, but in those days I was so shy that the very thought of meeting a girl I didn't know was enough to throw me into a fit of cold tremors. With men, and elderly ladies, I was quite at my ease; but put me near a pretty girl, and that was the end of me. I turned from a quiet, sensible chap (that was my opinion of myself) into a flustered, stammering fool. My mind would turn, to a blank, and if I did try and say something, it was a hundred to one that I made
The Watsons had one child, a girl of about sixteen named Elsie, and a fine little thing. I was never shy with her, and we became fast friends from the first day of meeting. Mrs. Watson helped Peter with the cows, and a good deal of the outside work, such as feeding the calves and looking after the hens and ducks, while Elsie stopped indoors and attended to the house work.
On this particular day, Elsie and Miss Arnold were in another room when I arrived, and I got myself jambed in behind the table before they made their appearance. Extricating myself, in order to shake hands, I knocked a basketful of reels of cotton and things off the end of the table. I felt the blood tingling to the tips of my ears, but endeavoured to appear unconcerned and at my ease. I stooped to pick up the litter, and dashed my head against the head of the fair visitor, who had stooped at the same moment. If I wasn't at my ease before, that accident didn't improve me.
Alice Arnold was a plump, fair girl, of about twenty-two. As soon as I saw her, I decided that she was the most beautiful creature I had ever met. Her cheeks were full and dimpled, her nose small and straight, her chin firm, and her forehead high and broad. Soft, fair hair fluffed rebelliously over her temples, and long eyelashes (which she knew how to make the most use of) gave her a shy demureness of expression, when she modestly cast them down between peeps from her bright blue eyes.
A complexion of cream and white, relieved by constant flushes of colour as she conversed, added to her charm, and when I gazed into her eyes, on that first meeting, it seemed to me that I had never seen a sweeter, kinder face.
And when she spoke! It was like listening to the clear and limpid notes of some distant flute, soft and low, yet clear and sweet. Plenty of other girls in this world have nice sweet voices, I suppose, but you couldn't convince me, even now, that they could compare with Alice. She spoke with a slight drawl, which gave an added effect. It made me think of her as a demure, old-fashioned little thing, and I put her on a pedestal and worshipped the moment I heard her speak.
I can't remember that I distinguished myself as a conversationalist at that first meeting. If I recollect, my collar gave me more trouble than anything else—it seemed to have suddenly shrunk into about two sizes too small for me.
After tea was over, we played Five Hundred. Mrs. Watson and Elsie went partners against Miss Arnold and me. I would have felt much more at my ease if Peter had taken a hand in the game, but he sat by the fire and read his paper. Five Hundred was a new game to me, at the time, but that was no reason for all the idiotic mistakes I made. Half the time I was so flustered that I couldn't remember what was trumps, and the only chance I did get to shine I messed up. I had a good no trump hand, with a predominance of spades. Elsie went six hearts, then it came to me.
“Six no spades!” said I, in my best poker voice, and then looked around and wondered what all the tittering was about. They gave me a chance to recover, after they had got over their giggles, but I just sat there looking bewildered, so finally Alice drawled:
“Which do you mean, Mr. Woodford? Six ‘no trumps,’ or six ‘spades’?”
Of course when I saw what a fool I was making of myself I got more flustered than ever, and forgot Alice's name, when I tried to answer her.
She played a good keen game, but we never had an earthly chance, the silly way I carried on. After the game I apologised for being such a “dud” player, but
Ladies, in my experience, are not alway magnanimous about games, however sweet they may be in other things; in fact, a good loser is a rare occurrence among them.
Before I left for home that night, Alice Arnold had created such an impression on me that I was determined to see her again at any cost. Love at first sight had always seemed to me to be a most improbable sort of thing to happen. People had to know each other's good qualities before they could love genuinely; without that mutual summing up and approval, it was only attraction.
Attraction or love, however, it made no difference to me. I went home that night satisfied that I had met the most beautiful, the most glorious, the most heavenly creature in the world. I never dreamt of courting her—not at that time; she was far too much above a mere mortal man for him to even think of courtship and marriage. I only hoped she wouldn't put a veto on me and refuse to let me call at the house she honoured with her divine presence. Had she done so, I should have bowed humbly to her dictum and admitted the justice of it. Love! It's the greatest thing in the world. If anyone had told me, the day before, that I should ever go so cranky over a girl as I did over Alice Arnold, I should have laughed them to scorn. I'd seen other fellows in love, and had always had rather a contemptuous pity for them. That night I walked home on air, and heard a soft, drawly voice in every sigh of the night breeze. The spell was still on me next morning. I mooned about my milking shed like a man in a dream. Every now and then I would come to earth with a jolt to find the work held up, and myself staring dreamily into space, milk pail in one hand, milking stool in the other. Then I would pull myself together, and go at the work with a rush, only to catch myself dreaming again before many
“And I want you, young man,” Mrs. Watson said, smiling and shaking a finger at me, “to come along as often as you can while she is here, and give her a good time.”
That was all the encouragement that I wanted. I was over there every other evening after that. Other fellows heard the great news, that there was a good looking girl stopping at the Watsons for a fortnight, and I didn't have the running all on my own by any means. Stan Collins, Bob and Alex Treadwell, Jack and Arty Wilcox, took to calling on old Peter as well.
Alice divided her favours evenly. It was a toss up who was first favourite, and some of the cynical elderly men of the district even went to the trouble of running a little book on us, the competition was so keen. I think they had me at about six to one, with Stan and Bob first favourites.
It wasn't until long afterwards that I heard of the book, which was a good job, because I should probably have made a row over it. The idea of betting on the state of heart of a divine creature such as Miss Arnold would have been too much for me I know.
During that fortnight, I thought of Alice, not as a girl, but as an angel. Divine, unapproachable. I kept hanging about, it's true, but at the same time I marvelled at my own presumption. I knew what I was. I was a rough, uncouth, ignorant country bumpkin, and I felt thankful, in a humble way, if I got two words and a smile in a whole evening.
What amazed me was the off-hand, breezy, free and easy manner the two Treadwell boys adopted towards Miss Arnold. They were calling her Alice before I had got past the stuttering stage. I didn't like those boys much at any time, but while they were competing for the favours of Alice I disliked them intensely. Bob was the oldest, a short, thick-set fellow of about twenty-four. He had a sneery, superior way with him, and a most overwhelming conceit. You could snub Bob until all was blue, it took no effect; he was so sure of himself that he simply assumed you were joking, and came back at you with a witty attempt of his own. If anything, his brother Alex was worse. Alex Treadwell posed as a humorist. My first introduction to the type of humour he went in for was down at the butter factory one morning. Alex had to pass my farm on his way down the road with the Treadwell milk cart, and this particular morning he came down about half an hour after I had left home. As soon as he arrived at the factory he shouted to me, and said:
“I say, Mark, did you turn your cows in on your patch of green oats, this morning?”
“No,” replied I, looking alarmed.
“Well,” continued Alex, “you'd better hurry back home. They were all in on the oats as I came past.”
I hammered my horse all that three miles back, cursing my luck, and wondering if they would all be blown before I could turn them off, and when I got home the cows were all at the back of the farm and had never been near the oat paddock. That was a great joke. The Treadwell family laughed about it for years afterwards.
While Alice was in the vicinity, the Watsons were fairly overwhelmed with company; this in spite of the fact that it was the busiest time of the year. We used to collect together in the drawing room and almost come to blows over who should turn the music, if Alice sang. I got disqualified at that business, early
Stan and I used to be pretty fair friends until that fortnight, but seeing him every other evening for fourteen days sort of sickened me of him. It struck me he was too foppish, and I didn't like the rotten way he slicked his hair back either. Another thing I didn't like about Stan was a silly way he had of quoting poetry—unmanly, I called it.
I couldn't help seeing, before the end of the first week, that I was running last. In spite of all my efforts, I failed to improve, and no girl can take an interest in a tongue-tied idiot too backward to talk to her.
Then one evening Bob Treadwell put his arm around Alice's neck, while he was sitting next to her, playing cards, and the lady showed us a touch of temper. She surprised us all, especially Bob, but everyone agreed that it served him right, she had never given him any encouragement to be so familiar. Bob was terribly hurt about it, and went for his hat and went home. The rest of us suddenly became very, very cheerful, me especially, and the evening was a great success.
She would never have any cause to complain of me being too familiar with her, I thought, as I went home that night. Perhaps, when she pondered over
After Bob had sampled the lady's temper, the Treadwell boys pulled out, and left the running to the Wilcox boys, Stan, and myself. I wasn't much afraid of Jack and Arty Wilcox—they were slow, dull chaps, more backward amongst the ladies than myself, even, but Stan had me worried.
About two days after Bob had decided that Alice was not worthy of him, I started to plough a newly stumped paddock on my farm, in order to sow swede turnips for the winter. Although I started on the farm knowing absolutely nothing about ploughing, by this time I had done a fair amount, and imagined myself to be an expert ploughman. The paddock was near the road, and I had worked for perhaps two hours at it, when what was my surprise to see Mr. Treadwell rushing across towards me as if something terrible was wrong.
“Mark! Mark!” he shouted, waving his hands. “This will never do—this will never do!”
“What won't do?” said I, stopping the horses, and sitting on the handle of the plough. The breathless way he had dashed across to me had me feeling quite nervous. I felt that something terrible must be wrong.
“What won't do!” repeated Mr. Treadwell, waving his hand at the land I had already ploughed. “Why, this—this ploughing. I knew what was wrong before ever I set foot in the paddock; I could pick it from the road.”
“What's wrong with it?” enquired I. “I thought I was making a very good job of it, considering the fact that it's newly stumped land and full of roots.”
I felt a bit aggrieved. Of course I appreciated Mr. Treadwell's fatherly interest in me, but at the same time it flashed through my mind that in some things he was just a shade too particular. He was
“Yes,” he went on, shaking his head sagely, “I seen what was wrong, before ever I set my foot in the paddock, Mark. You haven't got your skeith set properly. Give her more land, man, give her more land, and then notice the different work she'll make. Next time you start ploughing, come over and tell me, and I'll set your plough for you before you open up.”
He took my spanner, while speaking, and altered the skeith. But it wasn't about that he'd really come over for, I found, because his next words had nothing to do with ploughing.
“You know, Mark,” he commenced, in a confidential tone, “that girl down at the Watsons is the limit. She didn't ought to be allowed to carry on the way she's doing. What do you say?”
I pricked up my ears at this, and forgot the ploughing for a while.
“Yes,” he went on. “The way she's leading on all them silly young fellers is a fair caution. I can't understand what they're all thinking of—can you?”
He spoke to me as if under the impression that I wasn't one of the “silly young fellers” alluded to, but I knew he knew different from that. As I didn't answer, he continued: “You know, Mark, she's nothing but a flirt. Up here on a holiday, and making fools of all the softies in the district. You can't tell me she hasn't got a boy down Hawera way.”
When Mr. Treadwell sprung that guess on me, my heart went dot and carry one, but I bit my lip in silence. I'd never thought of that, and the idea wasn't pleasant.
“Ha! Ha!” went on Mr. Treadwell. “Our Bob put her in her place. She tried to lead him on, too but he soon showed her.”
I smiled to myself at that, because I remembered Bob hanging his head and looking sheepish and sulky, while Alice called him a great, uncouth, country bumpkin, and advised him to study manners, and learn to behave himself like a gentleman—even if he wasn't one.
Until Mr. Treadwell commenced to sneer at my divinity, I had always had rather a regard for him. I'll admit he was a nuisance, at times; his curiosity caused me inconvenience now and then, because no man cares to have all his business enquired into. Some of the old man's point blank questions took a lot of side-stepping, but I had always tolerated him because I thought it showed that at heart he was good natured, and wanted to help with advice. He was always the first on hand, of all the neighbours, with sound, practical advice, and I felt grateful for the undoubted interest he took in me. But after listening to his tirade against Miss Arnold, Mr. Treadwell lost ground in my opinion that he never recovered again. A twinge of doubt entered my mind; was he the disinterested, magnanimous person I had always imagined him to be? I took a good look at him. Strange how I had never noticed before what a sly, shifty eye he had!
“You know,” he mumbled on, “you've kicked about the world a good deal, Mark, so I expect you've seen her sort before. Must have a man hanging about, so she can make a fool of him.” He paused, then went on reflectively: “I blame the Watsons as much as I do her. Can't understand what Peter is thinking of, to allow such carryings on in his house. It wouldn't do in my house, I know that. Of course,” he added, “It's Mrs. Peter is to blame. She encourages the girl—it's just the sort of trick that woman delights in. She asks all the ninnies in the countryside along, to make fools of themselves, and I bet that as soon as you all get out the door again, they talk you over and make fun of you. (He had forgotten he commenced by assuming that I was not one of the
“Oh, did he!” I snapped. I'll admit that hurt, but Tready hadn't done with me yet. He still had pleasing news to impart.
“She came along the road for a walk on Sunday afternoon,” he continued gloatingly, “and when they came opposite your shack they had a great old laugh. Said she'd like to see herself living in a hovel like that!”
“Oh! Did she?” gasped I. “And who the blazes were they? Who was with her, anyhow?” Mr. Treadwell sniggered. If there's one thing that's against all nature, in my opinion, it's an old man that giggles—he's the last thing on earth. Old Tready saw humour in the situation, somewhere or other, although I couldn't follow the joke.
“Bob and Alex were with her,” he volunteered, when he had straightened out his face. I'd just about had enough of the old gentleman by then, but he went calmly on: “You know, Mark, it isn't as if she didn't know any better. She's naturally flighty, that's what is wrong with her. I said so as soon as ever I heard my boys talking about her. I warned them. What you young chaps want to do now—” he went on, impressively, “is give her a miss. Keep right away from her. Don't go near her at all, for the rest of her stay, and that will hurt more than anything. Don't you think so, yourself?” He stopped, in an enquiring attitude, to get my answer, and I had it ready for him. He had hurt my feelings more than once, during his conversation, but what really upset me was that such a common old man should dare to criticise an angel like Miss Arnold. His remarks struck me as almost profane.
“You miserable old back-biting blackguard!” I stormed. “What you want to do is get off my farm, and get off quick, before I put you off, and if I hear of you sneering about that girl again—you or your sons, either, I'll come along and thrash the whole bunch of you. Come on, hop it!”
I made a move in his direction, and he fell over the plough handle, in his haste to step back. I never saw a more injured looking old man in my life.
I suppose it was a bit of a shock to him. He had been so used to dropping in on me and criticising, pulling to pieces, and fault-finding, that he had got into the habit of considering me as his own property. My burst of temper must have been in the nature of a revelation to him. I know it was, because he told all the neighbours about it, and pictured me as akin to the snake that bit the hand that fed it. “And after all I've done for that man—” he would end up “Swore at me! Swore at me something shocking!”
Of course old Tready was bound to make the most of it, but as it happened I hadn't used bad language to him. After meeting Alice, I had made several good resolutions, and endeavouring not to indulge in bad language was one of them. It's a queer sort of returned soldier that can't swear, and I'm not trying to say that I couldn't do my share, on occasion, but I didn't swear that time.
After the old gentleman had hurried away, I continued with my work, but my heart was not in it. I kept chewing over the spicy bits of Tready's information. No wonder she laughed at my house! I had never been dissatisfied with it before: it had always appealed to me as rather a cosy little place, for a bach, but when I did start picking faults in it, the revulsion of feeling against it was pretty complete.
I went through every stage of dark despair that afternoon. I thought of the miserable returns I was taking off the place, just to think of the house made
It was a black look-out, to say the best of it. The milking season was far enough advanced for me to make a pretty fair guess as to what kind of returns I was going to clear on the year's work. After paying for seed and manure for cropping, and other items necessary for the running of a farm, I was going to be lucky if I came out with a £100 clear, to live on. I could manage on that with ease, but I shuddered at the bare notion of asking such a glorious creature as Alice to manage on such a sum.
I thought of that girl as other people might think of a princess. She should be surrounded with every luxury that money could buy, with servants to wait on her, and rolls of wealth at her command. The very best of everything was not half good enough for her. Now, of course, I see what a silly juggins I was. If she was half the girl I really thought her, she would have been only too proud to buckle in, with the man she loved, and help him to carve his way from poverty to affluence. But I never looked at the question in that light. Probably, had I taken her more for granted, instead of making such a divinity of her, I might have got on better.
The Saturday before Alice left the Watsons, Mrs. Watson called me aside, and gave me some motherly advice.
“Mark,” she said, “you are a slow goose. Why don't you take Alice for a drive somewhere, before she goes away?”
I had been feeling pretty much down in the dumps, and had got to the stage where I had no hope, but couldn't keep away. I expect I changed colour, when Mrs. Watson sprang that on me.
“I don't think Alice would care to go driving with me,” I replied. “I don't think I appeal to her as a companion.”
“Don't be silly,” returned the lady. “You ask her. You know, Mark, you mustn't expect a girl to jump into your arms,” she went on kindly. “Girls like to be courted. You try taking her by storm, instead of moping about looking as if you were afraid of her.”
I chuckled. “As a matter of fact,” said I, “You've just hit it. I am afraid of her.”
“Well, you must get over it,” said Mrs. Watson, laughing. “Try and remember that she is only a girl, after all, and brighten yourself up and shine in conversation. You'll never create an impression unless you talk to her.”
Talk to her! I didn't tell Mrs. Watson how the very sight of Alice put my heart in my throat. Apart from that, I had been going over my prospects and financial position, and had decided that, situated as I was, it wouldn't be playing the game to the girl, if I proposed to her. I had made up my mind to see as much as I could of her, during the remainder of her stay, and then try and forget her. Mrs. Watson's advice made me clean forget all these noble resolves, and the next thing I knew I was explaining to Alice what a lovely drive it was to Inglewood and back, and telling her she must do the trip before she left.
Alice listened with her lips parted and her eyes sparkling.
“Oh! I'd just love to go for a drive somewhere, before I go back to work,” she exclaimed delightedly.
Just shows you! I had approached the subject diffidently, quite expecting to be turned down coldly, and the girl actually jumped at the proposal. A man
Stan Collins excelled himself that Saturday evening. He sang a couple of songs, turned the music while Alice sang, and quoted replies to her questions in sloppy poetry. Every now and then he would deign to notice I was in the company, and address a remark or two to me in a kindly, sympathetic manner. It was quite obvious that he had ceased to regard me as a possible rival, and was being magnanimous. When I thought that I was to have Alice to myself for some hours, on the following day, I felt like laughing in Stan's face. If he'd only known about the drive arranged for the next day, he wouldn't have wasted half the sympathy on me that he did.
Until this last evening, Stan and I had been preserving a haughty truce towards each other, occasionally marred by snaps of temper, and sarcastic quips at one another. Sometimes the fair Alice had to use considerable tact, in pouring oil on the troubled waters, but she seemed used to the game, and didn't seem to mind a bit. In fact, I believe she enjoyed us best when we were on the verge of jealous quarrelling over her.
It's a queer thing, this jealousy. Now, if anyone had accused Stan or me of being jealous of one another, at that time, we would have scorned the imputation. We both thought we were playing the game, giving each other a fair field, and the only thing that puzzled the both of us was how such a sensible girl as Miss Arnold could possibly see anything to admire in the other.
If Stan and I didn't like each other, at this time, we at least refrained from meanly running each other down; we did no small-minded backbiting, which is more than can be said of the Treadwell boys, when they were in the running. Some fellows believe that “All's fair in love and war,” but I never held with that. All isn't fair in war, no matter what people say; it's going to be a pretty ghastly kind of a mix up, the next great war, if the combatants take that for their motto.
On Sunday morning I ran my gig out of the shed and oiled the wheels. I had bought it at a clearing sale for £4, and it was not what you would call a model turnout, by any means. The spokes of the wheels were all loose, and rattled and creaked when they were in motion, and both shafts were sprung and tied up with a few yards of wire. To say the best I could for it, it was a dilapidated, rattletrap old conveyance, and I hoped Alice's city education would prevent her from spying out all the defects, because if she was going to prove a discerning person that way, I could see her refusing to ride in it.
My luck was in. Alice was so busy keeping her white frock off the splash-board, and spreading a rug on the seat to sit on, that she never had time to notice what sort of a conveyance it was, until we were well under way. Then she began taking her shocks in small doses.
First of all she noticed that one of the shafts was broken, and galvanised me into a state of nervous tremors with the horrified shriek she gave. After that she found everything—it was marvellous how a city girl could be so quick at seeing things—and we had a lovely half-hour or so before I got her calmed down. First she thought the wheels were working off the hubs; then it was the harness was tied up with string; even the poor old milk cart horse came in for a share—she said it wouldn't surprise her if the horse ran away and upset us, it would be just like me, if it did.
In a way, that drive marks a milestone in my life, and I shall never forget it. It was a glorious summer day, Taranaki at its very best, not too warm for comfort, but fresh and sweet. Good old Mount Egmont stood up against the sky with a dazzling sparkle of snow for a cap; a cap streaked with black, where the snow in the gullies had melted and left the rock bare. All about the bush, at the foot of the mountain, little spirals of smoke were curling up, where settlers were burning off timber, preparing their land for the plough.
White ribbons of metal roads snaked in and out amongst clumps of bush and scrub, and lost themselves in the blue of the reserve, at the foot, and the whole picture was splashed with blobs of green and brown and yellow, where new patches of turnips were showing up, and hay and grain were ripening.
Personally I don't make any pretentions to being of an artistic turn of mind, but the beauty of the scene impressed me, just the same. In the little woody glens and creek-beds locusts were holding forth, with their queer chirrup, while up above us the skylarks were running an opposition orchestra, not to mention the contributions of thrushes and blackbirds, yellow hammers, starlings, and an occasional tui. There is something about animal and bird life that always appealed to me, and when I am not too busy working I often spend time studying their habits and trying to understand them.
I got my first big shock that morning when I turned to Alice, expecting her to be in raptures over the scene. As near as I've ever been to doing such a thing, I gushed, that morning. It made me feel thankful I was alive, and filled me with all sorts of queer, unusual thoughts—like trying to live a better life, to be worthy of such a country, and so on.
I tried to explain some of these solemn ideas to Alice, and that's where I got the big shock. I expected that a cultured, dainty young lady would take a natural interest in the beauties of nature, but it seems it has to be born in one.
Alice was a girl I was completely mad about. In my mind I had endowed her with every womanly virtue. She looked the very last thing in sweetness and sympathetic understanding, and yet, when I went to explain some of the thoughts the scene had inspired she simply couldn't understand me. She just gazed at me in blank amazement for a while, and then cut me short by saying:
Oh, bother scenery and birds! How can they affect anyone? Let's talk about something interesting. What sort of a town is Inglewood? Do they have dances there?”
I came back to earth with a nasty bump, but I didn't blame Alice in my mind for not understanding. I just felt myself to be a stupid fool, not even competent to keep a girl amused. Instead of finding out what topics interested her, and talking about them, I had to go rambling off on the beauties of nature. It wasn't as if it was a common failing of mine, either; it was a topic I very seldom touched. No! Instead of studying the taste of the girl, I had to go and pick out the very subject, out of all the things I might have talked of, that bored the girl stiff! I had to start off on nature, and get sloppy about it.
I pulled myself together, and we talked tango and jazz, and fancy dancing generally, and Alice brightened
Dancing, and that sort of thing, didn't appeal to me much, but I waded in valiantly and did my best. I was out of my depth most of the time, but I bluffed the thing through, and what I didn't know about the subject I made guesses at. It wasn't going to be my fault if Alice didn't come to the conclusion in the end that I was an intelligent, interesting young man.
At Inglewood I put the horse up for an hour and we had luncheon. I tried to be cheerful and bright, but somehow I felt disheartened. In spite of all my trying I had not got in touch with the real Alice. We had both been talking down to each other—both aware that we were not in harmony. It was like two people trying to play the same piece of music in different keys. Alice and I were both aware that our music was discord, but instead of stopping and trying to get in tune we kept hammering away, making up in noise what we lacked in harmony. We pretended it was fine, but at heart neither of us was satisfied.
I sighed, as we sat at our meal, and Alice smiled mischievously, and said: “A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Woodford?”
“You might call me Mark,” I suggested, “and you can have my thoughts for nothing.” I thought I would try and sound the deeps again, so I continued: “Look here, Alice, suppose a fellow loved a certain girl, and was as poor as a church mouse, what ought he to do?” I looked at her earnestly.
“Do?” returned she, briskly. “Make some money of course, and then marry the girl.”
“Thanks,” said I. “How easy! What a splendid, simple, solution!”
Alice's words might have sounded encouraging, but the flippancy of their utterance left me more hopelessly discouraged than ever. A blind man could have told that she was not applying the position to ourselves. Her answer, however, guided my thought into
Once in the gig again, and homeward bound, I commenced. I don't profess to be a romantic sort of fellow, I leave that kind of thing severely alone, as a rule, and stick to hard practical facts, but no man can live by himself for months without indulging in dreams now and again. In telling Alice my position, I gave her the facts, and mixed some of the dreams up with them..
I commenced with the farm. I laid great stress on the fact that at present it wasn't paying, because I wanted to be quite honest. Perhaps I over-emphasised that part of the business. Then I went on and wove some of my dreams into the story. I told her how I intended to work and plan and manage so that in a few years I would have one of the most model farms in New Zealand. I spoke of farming, describing it as a noble pursuit; wresting a living from the soil, working with nature for results; out in the open air, using the rain and sun as agents. I explained it all as fluently as I was able. I compared a farmer, producing right from the earth itself, and using the elements as his agents, with a man in business in a city, who had to make his living by acting as middleman, or else taking advantage of the wants or foolishness of his fellow men.
One used nature for making money, the other used men. The little of romantic thought I had allowed myself always ran in that vein.
“Don't you think farming intelligently, an uplifting calling for a man?” I ended.
“Good gracious! Don't ask me!” exclaimed Alice. “What can I possibly know about it? I always understood that farming made people dull and stupid. I'm sorry your farm isn't paying very well,” she added kindly. “Why don't you leave it, and get employment in some town; I'm sure it would be a pleasanter life
I suppose I was a fool to have told her that—out of all my remarks, it's the only thing she managed to register in her brain. The rest was as nothing. I believe she was under the impression the whole time that I was just babbling on, uttering airy nonsense for her entertainment.
I couldn't propose marriage to the girl without first letting her know exactly how I stood, and that was the only reason I had mentioned my financial troubles at all. If she wished to consider the offer, it was only fair to her to know what she had to expect. With other people I had purposely been rather close about my finances. I paid my way every month, and what I had in the bank was nobody's business. Alice was Alice, the girl I wanted to marry, so of course it was up to me to tell her.
Well, I'd told her. And even then I had the nerve to propose to her, before we got home. Of course I was turned down, that was a foregone conclusion. I don't expect I'd have had a dog's chance if I'd been rolling in money, but after telling her that I had none, what a hope I had!
When a man pops the question, according to the best authorities on the subject, he is supposed to speak in a tense, impassioned voice. My voice let me down badly, that's all I can say. It cracked in the middle, just as I got to the place where it ought to have sounded deep and solemn, and then it went on strike altogether, and left me gibbering in a whisper.
I had the same sort of thing happen to me once before. My horse mistook me for a bot-fly, one hot day, and nipped a piece out of me before discovering the mistake, and when I went to expostulate, all I could do was to dance about and gibber—so I suppose it's a sign of deep emotion with me.
Anyhow, it amused Alice, that was one consolation, although I failed to see it at the time, and I could
By the time we arrived at Watson's farm we had everything sorted out, and our future relationship to each other fixed. Alice liked me, but she hated country life. She didn't love me; she didn't wish to marry for years. She hoped to marry a town man, when she did marry, but he would have to be wealthy; she hated the thought of poverty, and nothing would ever induce her to marry a poor man, even if she fell in love with him. She intended to enjoy her youth, before she tied herself to anyone.
All that was pretty definite; the only consolation I could see in it was the fact that she hadn't promised to love me as a sister. She was so busy enjoying the proposal that I suppose that escaped her, because she didn't even express sorrow for me. In fact, when I went over the whole conversation afterwards, it seemed to me that Alice's chief expression, during that proposal, was a kind of demure, satisfied, complacency.
I suppose she was fairly used to that sort of experience, and was comparing my style and expression with that of other poor unfortunates she had put through their paces, at different times, but if she didn't waste any feeling over the business I felt enough for the two of us. I felt sick at heart and hopeless, and at the back of my mind there was a miserable conviction, a conviction that I tried not to think of, and yet there it was, nagging away like an aching tooth, and continually twinging itself on my notice. And that rotten conviction hurt more than all the rest put together.
Alice, the girl I had idealised, put on a pedestal and worshipped, regarded as a being about one remove from an angel—she had disappointed me. I don't mean because she had turned me down. I had all along half expected that to happen, but it was the way she had done it. My ideal Alice could never have
I went home to my humble bach, after dropping Alice at the Watson's gate, and that night I moped in front of the fire, too miserable for words. I had always been one of these smart, knowing fellows. Whenever I saw a man miserable and down, through some unfortunate love affair, I had always felt inclined to give him a piece of my mind, for making such a fool of himself. It seemed ridiculous, to me, to see a man moping just because some chit of a girl had fooled him. If I knew the circumstances, and was friendly with the man, I used to be there with cheap, breezy advice. “More fish in the sea,” and all that sort of rot.
I had the pleasure of trying some of my stale old platitudes on myself, and I found them very cold comfort, too. How I suffered, how I moped, that night! And I had known the object of my affections two short weeks! I'm surprised at myself even yet.
The morning after I met my Waterloo broke stern and relentless. I had half expected the world to stop going around, for a month or two, but not a bit of it. At 4 a.m., my alarm clock went off and dragged me unwillingly from sweet oblivion.
I had slept like a top, in spite of the fact that my heart was broken, and coming back to the realities of life next morning was quite an experience.
As soon as the alarm rang, I sat up and reached for my pants and shirt, which were hanging on a kerosene case alongside the bed; and for a start it seemed just like any other morning. Then gradually it began to dawn on me that something was wrong, I couldn't quite make out what. I lit the candle, under the impression that perhaps some of my clothes were missing, but no, they were all at hand.
The feeling was very like the emotion a man feels when he wakes up cold on a very frosty night, but doesn't liven up sufficiently to realise that all the blankets are on the floor, and that what he is snuggling under his chin so desperately is only one small corner of them that he has managed to retain.
I looked about aimlessly, and surmised that my restless feeling was due to hearing wind howling outside, because wind always made me feel irritable.
Then, suddenly, recollection came upon me with a dismal rush, and I knew I was one of these fellows with a blighted life.
“Henceforth,” thought I, “I shall have to go drearily through this vale of tears without ambition or happiness.” I was quite in earnest about it, too. It flashed across my mind at the same time that, as I was so certain that my future life was to be nothing but a colourless existence, perhaps I needn't bother to milk the cows that morning. “Why work?” I thought, “when work is no use to me.”
Then it occurred to me that it would be a pity to miss milking the cows—it would ruin them; perhaps after all the best way would be to carry on until the end of the milking season, and then sell out, and become a wanderer over the surface of the globe.
So I hied me to the milking shed, and the work went on just as if it were an ordinary, everyday sort of morning.
Alice went away that Monday morning, and I had time to get my proper amount of sleep and catch up with my work again. It was a relief to more farms
Stan Collins worked in Stratford, and used to bike in every morning, but the morning that Alice went off, Stan got a nasty surprise. Stan and I were good pals again, as soon as the rivalry was a wash-out, and he told me all about it.
On arrival at the office that Monday morning Stan received a polite invitation to step into the manager's office.
“Aha!” thought Stan. “Going to raise my screw! About time, too!”
He knocked meekly on the door and composed his face. “You know,” explained Stan, “I've always found it pay to take that sort of person quietly. Go in humbly, and look pleased and grateful for the honour, even if you expect a wigging. Nothing ever gained by stalking in as if you owned the place.”
The manager looked up on hearing Stan enter, and cleared his throat. “A-a-hem!” said he.
“Old chap's nervy,” thought Stan. “Hope he doesn't get mushy, when he mentions the rise.” Stan is something like me, in that way, even if he did blow off poetry to Alice. A touching and sentimental scene always makes him feel like undoing his collar stud so as to get more air.
He needn't have nerved himself for the manager's complimentary and feeling effort, however, because as it happened the old boy didn't make one. He just said: “Collins, I've had my eye on you for some time, and I've arrived at the conclusion that you are only wasting your talents, in a little business like this. I suggest you try some other company, your mind is too immense, for mere figures and facts such as we deal in here.”
Stan's mouth flew open, and his eyes popped out with the surprise, but he had no chance to say anything. The manager continued:
“I've left it as long as possible, Collins, in the hope that you might pull your wits together, but you get worse every day, instead of improving. I've been taking particular notice of your, for the last fortnight, and to be candid, young man, we can't afford to keep you here; not if you paid in your salary for the priviledge of stopping. Dammit! You don't work in this office at all, man. You just send your body along to fill the seat during working hours.”
“So of course,” said Stan. “After that I wouldn't stop with the firm any longer.”
As I went to the factory that morning I passed Bob Treadwell in the Treadwell milk cart. I nodded and shouted “Hullo, Bob!” but all I got was a glassy stare. For a while I wondered what was wrong; it struck me as silly of Bob. I supposed he was jealous, because I had taken Alice driving on Sunday.
“When he hears what a nasty thud I came, he'll come round,” thought I dejectedly, and dismissed the incident from my mind.
As it happened, it wasn't anything like that at all. What was wrong with Bob, was wrong with the whole Tready family, down to the kiddies going to school. After leaving me at the ploughing, that afternoon, Mr. Treadwell had brooded over my cruel words, and had then decided that I was not a nice person to know. In my haste, that day, I had referred to his sons as well, so the whole family was ordered to “cut” me. I didn't know that at the time, of course. As a matter of fact, I was pained and hurt when I found myself getting the cold shoulder from the whole family, girls and all, and it was only by a very roundabout course that I arrived at the real reason.
For a while, after Alice went, I was too unsettled and miserable to care who spoke to me or who didn't. I just plodded along in dumb despair, and hoped life
A month went by. The flush of the season was over, most of the cropping was done, and I decided to do some stumping. All the back of my farm was a wilderness of dead timber, and until it was burnt off, and the stumps of the trees extracted, there was no hope of it being profitable. It had to be cleared for the plough, cropped with turnips once or twice, and then put down into good English grasses and clovers, before I was going to reap much benefit from it.
I logged up about ten acres, before the winter set in, and then had three blistering, heart-rending days, burning it all off at once. There were hundreds of heaps, and I was in and out amongst them with a long pole, pushing them together as the heart burnt out of them. By knock-off time each evening I was as black as a sweep, and half dead with the smoke and heat. But I got the land cleared. A good burn, before the winter rains set in and waterlogged all the timber, is half the battle in clearing land.
All through the winter I worked away, logging and stumping and draining. People who say work is the cure for a broken heart are not far wrong—it cured mine, at any rate. I started taking a pride in the quantity of work I could do in a given time, and took to working out in all sorts of weathers, so as not to lower my average. Then I learnt a lesson that did me a lot of good..
In June it commenced to rain as if it never intended to stop. My cows were dry, and after feeding them out hay every morning, all I could do was stoke up the fire and sit by it all day long. After a week of it, I began to get restless; it seemed to me that the work was getting so far behind that I would never be able to catch up with it again. It was still teeming down, as if it had set in for the whole winter, so I sallied forth determinedly and commenced splitting
The second day of the experiment I began to feel conceited about it. I began to look upon myself as a kind of superman, much tougher and hardier than ordinary persons. Sam Dunn helped this illusion a good bit. He came over, wrapped up in oilskins, sack capes, and knee-boots, to borrow a shovel, and spotted me standing up to my knees in water, stripped to the waist, swinging a ten pound sledge-hammer. Old Sam couldn't believe his eyes, at first, but I was quite modest about it. I told Sam that I didn't intend to let a little thing like a few drops of rain put me behind with my work. In a year or so, perhaps, when I had the place knocked into shape, I might rest during wet weather, but at present I had too much to do to allow the weather to influence whether I worked or not.
Sam went floundering and splashing away, shaking his head and hugging the old sack cape tighter about his neck. He said afterwards the very sight of me gave him the creeps. Everybody he met, for days afterwards, he told about it.
Mr. Treadwell heard about me, and said it was just what he had been expecting. He said he'd been picking it to come for a long time and what a good job it was that it was affecting me in that way.
“You know,” said he, “me and the boys said that would be the end of him, long ago. Someone ought to go in and inform the police. It might take him in a different way, some of these mornings; we don't want to wake up and find our throats all cut.”
However, it didn't require the intervention of the police to stop me. I stopped pretty soon without their help. About the fifth day of the experiment I went home early. I had an idea that I didn't quite feel up to the mark.
“No use working against nature,” thought I, as 1 packed my tools away under a log. On reaching home I deliberated as to whether I would light the fire and cook something for tea, or not, and finally decided not to bother.
I undressed, and rolled straight into bed. I thought all I wanted was a good sleep, but there was no sleep for me, that night. I developed sharp pains in the back and chest, almost as soon as I lay down, and by the next morning I was quite helpless.
I had discovered one position I could lie in, and breathe; if I moved an inch out of it I got sharp, jabbing pains that nearly scared me stiff.
I hoped some neighbour would turn up; it was impossible for me to get out of bed and make any signal. Perhaps, I thought, someone might notice that my cows were hanging about the sheds, waiting to be fed, and might come over to investigate. It was still raining, and I suppose everyone was too busy feeding their own herds and hurrying to get inside again, to look over in my direction. By night time I was light headed.
I dozed off, once or twice, and woke up to find myself singing snatches of songs I hadn't remembered for years. Then I got the jim-jams. On my last visit over to the Watsons, Elsie had shown me a little blue china elephant, with a movable head that kept nodding when you vibrated the table it was standing on. I had been rather interested in the affair, but after seeing the wall paper of my domicile covered with several million little elephants, all nodding, I kind of went off that toy.
It was Sam Dunn found me, the next day. He rushed right away and sent Mrs. Dunn along, while he tore down to the post office and wired to town for a doctor. Mrs. Dunn called in at Andrews, on her way along, and collected Mrs. Andrews and an old lady that was visiting there at the time. They seemed to have the idea that the proper thing to do, in a sick room, was to keep the conversation going and not
Just to show them that I appreciated the efforts they were making to entertain me I put in a few words myself. I told them about a big grey rat that had been annoying me all the morning before their arrival. It kept climbing on to my table, where there was half a loaf of bread and a pound of butter, and I had spent the morning in hissing and shouting at it every time it made a fresh attempt. Each time it had grown bolder, and when Sam had arrived it had got to the stage where it hardly bothered to take any notice of me whatever.
As soon as I mentioned “rat” to those three ladies their attitude towards me changed, and I could see them giving each other significant looks. Then they all hurried out into the other partition, and I heard Mrs. Sam say: “Poor boy! Quite off his head! And he looked so sensible! Do you know, I never dreamt it, until he started to ramble.”
“Goodness me, Ella!” exclaimed the old lady. “Couldn't you see? Why, the look in his eyes was enough for me.”
“Gracious, yes!” chimed in Mrs. Andrews. “I didn't need to hear that, to know he was off his head.”
I felt a bit hurt with those ladies, because if they'd only taken the trouble to examine the bread on the table, they would have seen the marks of the rat's teeth in it, but I felt too tired to argue the question and pretty soon the doctor arrived, and said I had double pneumonia, and must go straight to hospital.
They rolled me up in blankets and propped me on the back seat of the doctor's car, with Sam Dunn on one side of me, and young Ted Andrews steadying my feet, and away I went.
Thus ended the first year of farming. I came out of hospital six weeks later, an emaciated shadow. The neighbours had formed themselves into a committee during my absence from the farm, and had taken turns at feeding my stock, and looking after things generally. It was not to be expected that they would cart out turnips, as they all had their own work to do, but they had turned my herd on to the crop to graze for an hour every day.
In consequence of this I found that I was going to commence the next season short of feed. Cows turned on to root crops waste far more than they eat, especially on wet ground.
I went into the financial position, on returning home, and found that what with my hospital bill, doctor's bill, and incidental expenses, I was about £30 in debt on the year's work. It wasn't a very cheering conclusion to arrive at, but hope again sustained me.
Instead of looking back, and worrying over the rotten year I'd had, I started to plan and look ahead, and felt just as optimistic, and sure of ultimate success, as I had done on commencing the first year. I fed off what was left of the swedes, eked out my remaining hay by almost counting the straws, and prayed for an early spring.
August commenced the spring by giving us twenty-two successive white frosts. The ground was frozen so hard that it required a crowbar to dig a post hole a foot deep. It was the worst frosty snap old Treadwell had ever experienced in all his twenty years living in the locality. As we were so close to Egmont's snow, we suffered more from frost than the rest of Taranaki, but we seldom had more than two or three running. Twenty-two was something to remember for years.
On my return from the hospital, Mr. Treadwell had magnanimously buried the hatchet, and was again calling on me twice or thrice a week. He had a habit of coming over while I was feeding out my scanty
“H'm'm! You'll be lucky if you don't lose half of them before the grass starts growing, Mark. Why don't you go into town and buy some feed to see you through?”
I didn't like to tell the old chap that the reason I didn't do that, was because I was already some thirty pounds in debt, over the last season, and that I simply couldn't afford to. I pretended that I thought the cows were getting quite enough.
As luck happened, I didn't lose any of the herd, but before the feed got away, that spring, they were such a rough, hollow, mournful looking lot of beasts that I was ashamed to look them in the face.
They utilised the first three months of growth by putting it on their ribs, and I had the pleasure of jogging that three miles to the factory every morning, with even less milk than I had taken the first year. It was a hard, thankless scratch, paying my way, and once I seriously thought of giving up tobacco, but by midsummer things began to brighten up, and I was saved that supreme sacrifice.
I had sowed summer and autumn crops to supplement the pasture, and as soon as I was able to feed these off, the food crisis was over. Instead of not getting enough, my cows could not manage to eat all I had supplied for them, and I felt the difference very decidedly in my milk cheques. It taught me a necessary lesson; if you can't manage to feed the dairy herd properly, sell out, and turn your hand to something else. From then on, I took care that I was never again short of feed. Sooner than allow it to happen now, I would sell half the herd, in order to feed the remainder properly.
After my experience with Alice Arnold, I was resolved to keep right away from girls—they only unsettled a man. I used to hear about Alice every now
That evening I went into my feelings with a probe, and finally decided that I didn't care a rap for her, and that it would be quite safe for me to go along and pay my respects when she arrived. Yes, I was quite over my foolish infatuation. I couldn't understand what I had ever seen in the girl, to go so dippy over her. I compared her with other girls I knew, and decided in my mind that she couldn't hold a candle to some of them.
“What a good thing it was that she didn't take me at my word, and accept me,” I thought as I sat staring into my fire that night. “I would be in a fix after all the fine talk I gave her about carving out a home in the backblocks fit to offer her, and all that sort of thing.” I mused on; here was a year gone west, and in spite of all my fine talk, and noble ambitions, here I was, without a penny saved, and if anything even worse off than I had been when I had proposed to the girl. What a lucky escape!
Of course I blamed the hospital and my illness for my non-success. I don't suppose my bout of pneumonia made all that difference, really—on looking back, I have an idea a lot of my misfortune was due to my lack of sound farming knowledge, but I liked to blame the pneumonia, it was comforting to have a good solid reason for my continued poverty.
“Anyhow,” thought I, “no more acting the giddy goat running after Alice.”
I felt that if there was going to be any danger of a recurrence of that mad disease, it was up to me to put my foot down firmly, and keep out of her way. But of course it was all right; I knew what I was doing. I didn't care two straws for the girl; in fact there were other girls about I liked better.
The same arguments I had used the year before came back to my mind. It was no use me falling in love with any girl until I was in a position to marry; and when I was in a position, it wouldn't be Alice I'd try for. Once bitten, twice shy. Because I'd been foolish once, was no reason why I should keep on being foolish.
In spite of all these wise resolves, I was not quite so sure of myself as I tried to make out. One thing I was sure of, and that was that as soon as Alice did arrive, I was going to call—not because I wanted to see her, certainly not—but I wanted to gaze on her with cold blood, and try and find out what there was about her that could have made me act so foolishly the previous year.
And if—of course it wouldn't—but if the spark rekindled, I was going to go away, and stop away, until she had left the district again. I had work to do, and I was not going to waste time as I did before, running after a girl that didn't want me. A man had to call on his pride some time or other in such a case.
Stan Collins dropped in to see me about two evenings after this.
“Here's a go, Mark!” said he. “The fair Alice arrives in the district next Monday. Got a good supply of clean collars on hand?”
I didn't quite know how to answer, so I remained silent, and sucked hard at my pipe, as if I was having trouble with it. I find that's a very good way, when you don't quite know what to say. If Stan thought I was only slightly interested, he would ramble on, and tell me all his thoughts on the subject, but if he fancied I still retained a sneaking liking for the object of our conversation, he was going to tread lightly, so as to avoid hurting my feelings.
My casual reception of his news completely deceived him; he evidently thought that I didn't feel enough interest in the girl to bother to reply, so he set to work to liven up my interest in her again.
Nobody but an absolute fool ever dreams of discussing a girl with a man that is soft over her. Stan was no fool, by any means, but he had got over any fondness he had ever had for Alice, and he naturally assumed that I had done the same. As for myself, I thought I had got over the experience, too, only strange to say I didn't wish to hear anything detrimental said about the girl. I felt that if that happened, I would have to contradict it. I wasn't in love any more, oh, no! but I still looked upon Alice as a very fine girl.
“Yes,” continued Stan, “and I can give you some news about her, too, Mark. She hasn't been idle this last year. My brother Ned works in Hawera, and he knows her fairly well. She has a fresh swain on a string about every three months, he says, and then either they get fed up with chasing about after her, or else she gives them the sack for someone else.” I grunted non-committedly, on hearing this. I couldn't believe it; Alice was not that sort, I felt sure, but I held my peace, and Stan resumed:
“She doesn't seem to be able to stick to one fellow, but must be flirting about. No staying power in her. Funny, too! Most girls are so different. Most girls get their boy and stick to him through thick and thin, once they have chosen. That's the one thing I've always admired in women,” commented Stan, pensively. “The way they remain faithful to a man, even when he proves himself to be a waster. Taking them as a bunch, they're stickers, there's no doubt of that. Of course, now and then you run across a flighty one that flirts here and everywhere, but a man soon takes a tumble to that kind. Look at you and me, now,” he went on, “look at the blooming fools we made of ourselves over that girl only last year, didn't we? But would we do it again? Not much we wouldn't! She could smile and ogle at us from now till doomsday, but she'd never get us to fall into line again, now, would she? We learnt our lesson, and
I hoped Stan was right. I felt like taking up the cudgels on behalf of the girl, but felt that would be rather foolish. He meant well enough, why should I hurt his feelings. “Besides,” I reasoned, “he might get it into his head that I was still soft over the girl, if I began to argue about her, and of course I wasn't, it was just sentimental interest I felt in her, that was all. A man is bound to feel interested in a girl that has at some previous time turned him down.”
After Stan stopped speaking we both sat staring at the fire in thoughtful silence for a time, and then I said:
“Well, Stan, I suppose the reason the girl doesn't stick to one man, is because she hasn't yet met the man she could love.”
“That's all very fine,” replied Stan. “But why does she lead all these other poor devils on? If she doesn't love them, why encourage them? You know yourself, Mark, this being encouraged and then handed the lemon, hurts like sin. At least, if you don't, not being much of a ladies' man, I can personally vouch for the truth of that. I've had some!”
Stan's reply stumped me, and I could only answer weakly: “Girls nowadays seem as if they can't be happy unless they have some fool or other dancing attendance on them. 'Tisn't only Alice. Every blessed girl in the district would get you on a string if they only could.”
“By jove, Mark!” exclaimed Stan, as if I had said something very profound, “You've just about said it!”
Alice arrived on the Monday, and that evening I made a careful toilet and strolled along to see her. I wanted to see if she had altered, but I was not greatly interested in her, one way or the other. She would find Mark Woodford to be much more of a man of the world, much harder to impress, than she
Peter had just finished up his out-door work, on my arrival, and was busy at the tank stand, having a wash. I've got a lot of time for old Peter Watson—always jolly, always lively—but that evening I was inclined to regard his sense of humour as a little bit on the crude side. No sooner had I hove into view, round the corner of the house, than he let out a most tremendous roar:
“Alice! Alice! Here he is!” I felt like doing a bolt for home again on hearing that awful roar, but before I had time to turn about, Mrs. Watson, Elsie and Alice rushed outside to see what was wrong, and Alice said: “Here's who, uncle?”
“Why, old Mark, of course!” said Peter, and burst into a roar of laughter. I felt the back of my ears burning, and wished myself anywhere but there. It struck me that if I had postponed my visit to the second, or even the third day, after Alice's arrival, it would have been quite early enough. Especially as I had only called to show her that her sway over me was gone for ever.
“Don't take any notice of that great booby of a man,” said Mrs. Watson, marshalling me inside. “Good gracious! He has about as much sense, sometimes, as a baby.” Mrs. Watson knew me fairly well, by this time; she could see that Peter's words had embarrassed me very much, and lost no time in getting me inside and out of range of his next volley. Of course it was silly of me to feel so embarrassed; most fellows would have laughed with Peter and enjoyed the joke, but I was always inclined to be thin-skinned, or perhaps I should say self-conscious, when ladies were about.
I've heard that self-consciousness is a form of conceit; if so, all that I can say is, it brings it's own punishment with it. If you don't know the torture of
On getting inside the house, I hung my hat and coat in the hall, took a deep breath, mopped my brow with a handkerchief, then braced myself to meet Alice in the light of the drawing room.
For months I had been telling myself that I didn't care two pins for her—that the year without seeing her had cured me—but when it came to meeting her face to face again, I found myself all in a tremble before ever I'd got a proper look at her.
She came forward smiling and shook hands warmly, while I made queer guttural noises in reply.
She was the same Alice I had fallen for the year before—only more so. In our previous encounters I had remained sane enough to be able to discriminate which cheek it was that dimpled when she smiled, but this time I couldn't even do that.
I caught a sparkle from her eyes, a flash from her white teeth, had a confused impression of pink and white complexion, and dimples by the dozen—and I was caught. Not only was I caught, but I was glad of it. I didn't put up the faintest fight. In a flash, all my resolves fell bang to the ground. The year of meditation over her former treatment of me, was just as if it had never been. On every occasion I had been carefully telling myself that I would never make a fool of myself over her again, because we had absolutely nothing in common; we viewed life from totally different angles—the trip to Inglewood had proved that—and yet, here I was, the moment I met her again, more in love, more mad about her than ever.
Well, this love business takes a lot of understanding, after that! Why should I become so smitten with the girl? I couldn't even talk sensibly or comfortably
With Alice I always seemed to feel hampered and restrained. I was afraid to let myself go in conversation, and she always appeared to me to hold herself slightly aloof. Usually, in desperation, I would endeavour to break through this armour of aloofness by cracking some ridiculous pun, and the fact that my humorous efforts generally fell dead flat in no way helped me or improved the social atmosphere.
If I'd had a glimmering of ordinary common sense, at this time, I should have cut out the attempts at wit, and confined myself to straight-out sentiment; all girls can understand that; but no! The flatter my joke fell, the more desperately I struggled to retrieve the situation. I've seen Alice staring wide-eyed at me, after an especially unsuccessful joke, as if she had her own private doubts as to my sanity. Usually, to relieve the strain, she would kindly change the subject for me, and speak for a while in simple, unaffected language, so as to give me a chance of following her, evidently under the impression that my capacity in that direction was limited. If she did condescend to take notice of any of my sallies, it was mostly to snap them up literally and take offence. Nothing can be so disconcerting. It is a bad habit to “pun,” so they say, but it's a much worse one to insist on taking all puns literally.
I've always said that a person devoid of humour ought to be shut up somewhere. Alice seemed to have no kink that way; or at least her sense of humour differed very greatly from mine. Every time I was snubbed for trying to shine, and make myself entertaining and pleasant, I blamed myself. I called myself names and hated myself for a stupid idiot, but
Alice gave me a pleasant, gracious hearing that first evening of her return, and before I was aware of it, I found myself contracting to drive her in to Stratford to the pictures on Saturday night, and to a dance about ten miles away on the Wednesday following.
I was busy at the time and had ploughing to do, as well as haymaking and a host of other work that seemed to crop up about that time, but my work didn't prevent me from getting over to Watsons every other evening and stopping until after midnight, or from rattling that girl about the district whenever she wanted to go anywhere during the daytime.
After the first day, her old admirers began to roll up again, as they had been wont to do the year before, and although I held first place, by virtue of my gig being at her constant disposal, I was by no means over-encouraged. Of course, that's the game. All girls know enough to keep an admirer hovering between jealousy and despair, it keeps him up to scratch, and it's a remarkable thing, in all the love affairs I've ever seen, I've never yet come across a man with enough discernment to see that he was being so treated. Everyone else knows it except the poor devil that's being put to the torture. He not only doesn't know it, but it's no use trying to tell him.
I suppose I was a moral coward, but I found it impossible to tell Alice how poorly my farming venture was faring. I was more in love with her than ever, and I am afraid, without being exactly a liar, I led her to believe that my prospects were fairly bright. I stilled the whisperings of my conscience by assuring myself that “so they were.”
In spite of our tendency to see things differently, I found I was getting a fairly good hearing. We had a heart to heart talk, the evening I drove her in to the pictures, and without actually being accepted by the lady, I came back brimming with hope. I was “on trial,” and it rested with me to so improve the opinion Alice held me in, as to get her to say “yes,” without any restrictions such as she at present imposed.
A couple of days after I had been elevated to the proud position of chief admirer to the lady of my heart, Peter Watson harvested his six acres of oats, and everybody in the locality turned up to help. I arrived on the scene bright and early. I had donned a white shirt, in lieu of my ordinary coloured working shirt, and wore my second best suit of clothes. Naturally enough my appearance created quite a sensation amongst all the other farmers. They were not in love, so of course it hadn't occurred to them to tog up anything specially; their ordinary working clothes seemed quite good enough to wear, as far as they were concerned.
I saw I was going to have an unpleasant day of it. Most of the men present, after having a smile and joke at my expense, were prepared to drop the subject, but Mr. Treadwell, Bob, and Alex, thought it far too fine a chance to let it slip by. They kept alluding to my “glad rags” every time the work of the field took them anywhere within hearing of me, and wondering in audible asides when the wedding was to take place.
Jack Wilcox was the only other “trier,” and my appearance so far eclipsed his that he almost escaped notice. He had turned up in clean new denims and his best boots—that was as far as his imagination had taken him.
In a forlorn, hopeless, dogged sort of way old Jack was still pegging along paying his court to Alice. She took absolutely no notice of him; didn't even rank him in the list of the possibles, I believe, but Jack didn't seem to realise that. He used to drop in at the Watsons almost as often as I did, and sit about saying nothing, unless directly addressed. I wasn't at all worried about him, and Arty had slung in the mitt altogether, and didn't even bother to visit.
During the day I took a good deal of not altogether good natured chaff from the Treadwell boys, Bob in particular being very sarcastic. I can stand any amount of “fun,” provided I know there is no deliberate attempt at hurting the feelings, but when the fun is tinctured with malice and sting, I am inclined to become rusty about it.
At three in the afternoon the ladies of the house appeared on the scene with buckets of hot tea and baskets of cakes and scones. This was the best part of the day, the part I had been looking forward to. It was the reason I was wearing my second best suit of clothes, and a shirt with a soft collar attached. Alice was helping to carry the food.
The bombardment of bucolic wit I had been enduring all day had not been without its effect upon me. My face ached with trying to smile every time anyone remarked on my gala regalia; curse the white shirt; how I wished I hadn't put it on! My nerves were so frazzled by three o'clock that I began to feel an absolute hatred for one or two of the worst offenders.
In spite of all the joking, however, I sidled up and managed to get a seat on the grass alongside Elsie and Alice. The fun was fast and furious, but while I sat there I didn't mind. I knew that Elsie regarded
As is usual, in the hay field, the boys went in for a little mild skylarking. Alex Treadwell crept up behind Alice and almost buried her under a huge armful of straw, while at the same moment, Bob, who had been waiting his chance, dashed under the heap just as it was descending. There was a muffled shriek, and presently the two emerged again in a smother of seed and dust. It may have been my miserably suspicious nature, yet, by the way the flushes chased themselves across Miss Alice's face, I more than half suspected that Bob had snatched a kiss, while they scuffled under that heap of straw.
If he did, I don't blame him; it's only what I wanted to do, but didn't have the nerve. At the time, however, I could cheerfully have murdered him.
I waited for Alice to get her breath, expecting her to denounce him (how simple I was in those days!) but if he did kiss her, Alice evidently wasn't publishing the fact.
In a fit of moody sulks I filled my pipe and strolled away to look at the stack. He could kiss her if he wanted to, I didn't care. In fact I didn't even care about stopping to look on, I was so disinterested. I'd show her she couldn't make me jealous.
Mr. Treadwell was stack builder. He was already back on his job, walking around the stack examining it with a critical eye, and raking at it with a wooden hayrake. Stack building, with Tready, was one of the serious businesses of life; only very gifted men should attempt it.
“How does she look?” he inquired, on perceiving me.
I replied that I thought that the lee side was coming to a top slightly faster than the weather.
“Pshaw!” said Mr. Treadwell, snorting indignantly at the idea of my daring to express a direct
He was quite right. I never pretended to a knowledge of the art, but it didn't improve my temper and general state of mind to be told so abruptly. I had merely repeated the opinion held by other men in the field. As he had asked me, I thought he really wanted to know the truth, so that he could take steps to rectify any faults of construction on resuming work. But evidently, instead of that, Mr. Treadwell had been fishing for a compliment.
Shortly after this Bob came rushing round the corner to me, accompanied by a couple of grinning companions. “Oh, here he is!” he exclaimed. “Just the man we're looking for, Mark!”
“Well, what is it?” said I shortly. From the expression on Bob's face, and the eager expectation shown by the other two young fellows, I knew that it was going to be one of his “jokes,” and I wasn't feeling in the mood for much more of that kind of baiting.
“Miss Arnold says, that if you're sure you won't mind, she thinks she'd like to go to the dance next Wednesday with me,” said Bob, as if delivering a message. “Only if you don't mind, of course. I'm to take the answer back at once,” he sniggered, “before the ladies take the tea things back to the house.”
Some more of the men had collected and a general titter went around. I know what I should have done. I should have laughed and made a joke of the thing, but I didn't. I looked at Bob, standing there with a smug, self satisfied smirk on his face, and I saw red. “You're to take your answer back to Miss Arnold at once are you?” said I, quietly. “Well, here it is, Bob, take this back, with my compliments.” With that I landed on the point of his nose with my right fist, and followed up immediately. It was no fight. It wouldn't have been so bad if it had been. Inside of ten seconds Bob was surrounded by his excited and
The fuss old Treadwell made of this little mix-up one would have thought that Bob was the only man in the world that had ever had his head punched. He wanted Peter Watson to send for the police at once, and when Peter only laughed at him, the Treadwell family left the field in a body, Bob flourishing a blood-stained handkerchief, while Alex guided his faltering footsteps.
How the business had come about in the first place was through Bob, who was in ignorance of the fact that I was to drive Alice to the dance, asking her if she would care to go with him.
Alice had replied: “Ask Mr. Woodford, he had arranged to take me to it. If you can get him to waive his claim, then come and ask me again.” Alice had considered that as good as a definite “no,” or if anything, even more positive, as it showed that she already had an escort. Bob had accepted it as such, but the temptation to continue the baiting all day had proved too much for him, and he had hunted me out to try his wit once more.
The dance in question was on the following evening, and instead of escorting Alice, or any other girl, to it, poor Bob was forced to lie low, until nature faded some of the colour out of his black eye and brought it back to normal again.
What with haymaking, listening to fools making merry at my expense all day, and finally quarrelling, I had had a pretty severe day of it, so that night after tea I did not go over to the Watsons, but went to bed instead. As a matter of fact I think I was afraid to go over. I tossed and turned for half the night, thinking of what a fool I had made of myself. Probably, I thought, the girl would refuse to go to the dance with me, after what had happened. Most likely she would snub me direct, and refuse to let me speak to her even. A cultured, finely strung girl like Alice
The more I thought of it, the worse it seemed to be. What would she think of a man who couldn't even stand a little fun being poked at him without losing his temper? I tried to tell myself that Bob had asked for it, but that made it no better. Even if he had asked for it, he had never expected to get it. There was only one thing to be done, and that was to wait until Wednesday evening, call with the gig, and see how Alice behaved to me about it.
Wednesday evening arrived. I tied my horse up to the fence at the roadside, and crept up the path to the house like a condemned man doing the last walk. I knocked at the door with such a will that I had to repeat it about four times, and each time I knocked I felt meaner and more of a criminal.
Then old Peter, with his usual tact, threw open the door and bawled: “Ha! Here's the man-killer!” I think he might have announced my arrival more modestly, myself, but it didn't matter, as it happened. I entered the room to find myself the centre of interest.
Elsie came and hung over the back of my chair admiringly, and whispered: “Good old Mark! It served him right!” while Mrs. Watson made me a drink of tea, and Alice graciously plied me with scones and cakes. I had arrived early, and had to wait at the house for half an hour before there was any need to get under way.
My reception amongst the ladies was a great relief to me; I had crept in half expecting to get snubbed all round, but instead of that they were making quite a hero of me. I felt I was prepared to deal with a dozen Bobs, one after another, to get such a hearing, but all the same I felt just the tiniest bit disappointed in Alice. It seemed hard to believe that such a sweet, tender-hearted angel could be anything else but deeply shocked and pained at such a vulgar, brutal thing as a brawl. However, she wasn't. Instead of it having that effect on her, she actually condoned the offence,
When we arrived at the dance hall I tied my horse up in the horse paddock provided, and we then started in to enjoy ourselves. I was not a very skilful dancer, but there was a string orchestra playing that was lively enough to make a wooden man wish to get out and try.
I had the first dance with Miss Arnold, of course. She was dressed in a simple white frock, and looked so absolutely stunning that the other fellows mobbed her for dances as soon as I had escorted her back to the seat.
When a man takes a girl to a dance, around our way, he usually expects to have the first dance, supper waltz, and last dance. These are considered his by right, and if he wants any others in between, he has to arrange for them. I knew I wasn't a very good dancer, so seeing that Alice was getting plenty of partners, I resigned myself to the prospect of just having the three that were mine by right of bringing her, but I was too optimistic by far.
I did try for a waltz or so in between, but Alice was engaged every time, so finally I said: “All right, enjoy yourself, but remember to save the supper waltz, won't you?”
After speaking for the supper waltz, just in case the lady might forget (she shouldn't do, as it was mine by custom) I retired out into the hall porch, and smoked tranquilly until the time came for me to go in and claim the dance. As soon as it was announced, in I dashed, all eagerness, just in time to see Alice taking the arm of someone else. She saw me coming towards her and gave a queer little tantalising smile, then glided smoothly off to the music, as if there was no such person as Mark Woodford in all the world.
The partner she danced with took her in to supper, while I moped out in the porch and wondered what
you wouldn't mind saving me from an embarrassing position.”
Of course once I found I'd been useful to the girl I bucked up. It was rather nice of her to put it that way; I'd let her see that she could always depend upon me in cases like that. “Can I have the last dance?” I asked diffidently.
If I wanted to I could, certainly, but wouldn't it be better if I went out and harnessed up the horse and brought the gig around to the door of the hall, and then as soon as the dance was over Alice could come straight out and climb in, without any waiting in the cold?
I agreed that that was a very sensible suggestion and then sadly departed to put it into execution. By the time the last dance was over I had the conveyance on the road opposite the door of the hall. The night was pitch dark, and outside of the radius of my gig lamps I found it hard to see anything, but after waiting impatiently for a matter of perhaps ten minutes I managed to make out the forms of two people standing about a chain away. I wondered what was keeping Alice; perhaps she was waiting for me to go into the hall and escort her out.
Just as I had reached the limit of my patience, and was climbing out of the gig to tie the horse up and
“Good time!” said I bitterly, and then words failed me.
I glanced at Alice. She was eyeing me with her chin set at a determined angle. “Well?” said she. “Go on!”
“Go on, what?” I replied.
“Say what you're thinking of me,” said Alice “Tell me how badly I've behaved to you to-night.”
“If you realise that you haven't played quite fair with me,” I returned, “that's sufficient. I see no reason to chew it over now. It's done, let's forget it.”
“Mr. Woodford,” said Alice, “you are too—too—I don't know how to put it!”
“Too slow and stupid for words,” I finished for her. “I know that, Alice. I can't help it. I'd be different for you if I knew how. I don't blame you for not wanting to dance with me because I know quite well how dull and clumsy I always am in a ballroom.”
“It isn't that at all,” replied Alice. “I'm a selfish little beast. I simply love to get good partners, at a dance, but that isn't the reason I behaved so meanly to-night.” Her voice quivered: “I believe it was just to see how much you would stand from me—I don't know why I did it! I only know that I behaved horribly to you, and I'm sorry.”
“Never mind, old lady,” I replied. “You can wipe your boots on me if you wish to. Don't go feeling bad about it.”
“Oh, you—you!” exclaimed Alice with exasperation. “You won't understand! Why don't you get angry? Why don't you scold me?”
I looked at the girl in surprise. “I can't get angry with you Alice,” I replied gently. “I haven't any right to. It was quite right of you to dance where you liked. I took you to the dance to see you enjoy yourself and I'm glad you did. I want you to know, Alice,” I continued earnestly, “that whatever you do, however you treat me, in the future, I shall always believe in you sufficiently to know that you are in the right. That's how I feel about you. I don't think it possible for such a fine, sweet-natured girl as you are, to treat me badly, unless the fault in the first place is my own. As for being offended because you preferred to dance with good dancers, well, if I allowed myself to be that, I should be a poor speciman of a lover. I consider myself the luckiest fellow on earth to be allowed to take you to the dance; that's honour enough without you making a martyr of yourself all the evening as well.”
“Mark, you don't know much about girls!” said Alice, changing the subject suddenly.
It was the first time she had ever called me “Mark,” and I noticed it. I said “No, I had never courted anyone before,” and Alice laughed, and advised me to be more lively and cheery and talkative.
It may have been quite good advice, but I failed to see how I was going to follow it, especially the being more lively and cheery part, if my loved one intended to treat me to any more such soul-searing experiences as I had gone through that night. For in spite of my telling Alice that it didn't matter, and making light of it, her neglect had wounded me very much. Why didn't I get angry! Why didn't I scold her? I knew why! I had a pretty good reason for not riding any high horse. Although I was so much in love myself, it didn't require much grey matter to figure out the fact that Alice was as yet perfectly heartwhole and
What most fellows would have done, after that dance, would have been to drop the girl and try somewhere else, but I was built differently. I just had to keep on keeping on, and Miss Alice knew it.
With a face as demurely innocent as a wee child's, that girl could devise the most ingenious and harrowing tortures. While pretending to talk to someone else, she could contrive to have me grilling on the rack, and the more I winced and wriggled under the ordeal, the more she would continue to rub in the acid. If I ventured to protest ever so little, afterwards, she would say: “Goodness, how you do take things to yourself! Why, I wasn't even talking to you at the time I said that.”
Then I would close up like a book, and wonder why providence had created me with such a suspicious, touchy mind. But sometimes Alice would be visited with momentary fits of remorse, and on these occasions she used to give herself away. These fits were not very frequent, but whenever they came over her she used to start calling herself names. Even then her remorse was more to be feared than not. She always started off very well, generally by alluding to herself
That used to be my cue. As soon as Alice got to the pertinent question part of her remorse, I had to dash in and argue before she worked herself up into a state of indignant anger about me. If I just let her run on (I tried it once) she asked question after question, each one a little more personal and accusing, until at the end she proved it was all my fault, and had me so scared and dejected, that all I could do was salaam and beg pardon.
The best way, if she started on that stunt, was to head her off with an argument. I got pretty handy at that. I found, very early in our intercourse, that by a judicious system of contradiction I could sometimes so work things as to get my own way. Providing Miss Alice thought she was going the opposite to me she was satisfied. I don't remember ever meeting such a girl for arguing as she was. It didn't matter a button what it was about: the main thing seemed to be to keep me from feeling conceited. I had to be taught that I didn't know everything.
Sometimes I used to give in, just to have peace and quiet, but that was no good either. If I did that I was accused of having no mind. I've seen Alice box the compass two or three times in a really exciting argument, and then turn round and accuse me of being as changeable and shifty as a weather-cock. There was nothing slow or tame about courting Alice Arnold.
During Alice's fortnight at Watsons I think I proposed on an average of once every two days. Every time I popped the question I received an unsatisfactory answer. I used to go through all sorts of mental gymnastics, trying to work out plans for seeing her
In my experience, if there is one position more unbearable than any other, in love making, it is this being kept on tenterhooks. If a man is accepted, he is happy—or he ought to be. If he is refused definitely he knows the worst, and can act accordingly. But this hovering between, one day half delirious with joy, because of an extra sweet smile, the next day down in the depths of despair, because the lady has lost a hair comb or a brooch, or has had a tiff with someone in the house just before you arrived—that is the pace that kills.
Right up to the last day of Alice's stay I was kept in this suspense, and on the morning that she was to leave I arranged to drive her down to the station in the gig. I thought it would be a good chance to make a final determined try. All the way down the road she chattered gaily herself, not allowing me to get a word in edgeways. I tried to butt in once or twice, but I could see that she had no intention of allowing me to speak, so in the end I let her babble on, promising myself that I would force some kind of an answer
On the station platform luck was against me. A couple of girls, evidently going by the same train, came smiling up to Alice and commenced talking to her.
I had a box of chocolates and a magazine I had thought to buy, in readiness for this leave-taking. I thought Alice might like them on the journey down, and I wished those girls would go away. I couldn't produce my little offering while they were there; I was quite awkward and tongue-tied enough without them for an audience.
They had no intention of going away; one would have thought that Alice was their long lost sister, the fuss they were making of her. She, as usual, had quite forgotten me. I might as well have been miles away, for all the notice she was taking of me. I stood at the side of those three chattering, gushing young ladies, and I don't believe the other two so much as realised that I knew Alice. I did my best. I looked as bright as I could, kept up an appearance of interest in their silly conversation, and cut in once or twice with a judiciously timed laugh. It was no good! Time was drawing near. I got fidgety. I hopped impatiently around to the near side so that Alice could see me, shifted my parcel about ostentatiously, blew my nose, looked at my watch, and went through one or two more little antics. Then the train whistled at the road crossing, just before the entrance to the station, and I became desperate.
I pushed myself in alongside of Alice, thus drawing the attention of the trio to the fact that I was a flesh and blood human man, and not the station hitching post, which they seemed to think, judging by the way they were ignoring my presence, and Jessie Keightly, one of the girls, smiled, and said: “Why, Mr. Woodford, what brings you here so early in the day?”
I looked at Alice. She was working off that modest, detached expression she saved for special times, looking down her nose from under her long
The train rattled and roared past us, coming slowly to a standstill, and the three girls prepared to jump aboard. I knew it was now or never, if I intended to make my parting gift. I held the parcel out awkwardly, and stammered: “I—— I—— These are to eat on the train.”
In my agitation I pushed the offering almost under Jessie's nose, and after starting back in surprise, she smiled a mischievous little smile, reached out her hand and said: “Er—thank you, Mr. Woodford, how kind of you!”
Well, that did it! If ever a man felt a fool, I did. Alice laughed outright, and I turned and bolted off the platform.
As soon as I was out of range of the battery of their eyes, my nerve returned somewhat, and mustering all my courage I dashed back again. The girls were aboard the train, which was just beginning to get into motion. Something had to be done, and quickly, if I meant Alice to have that parcel. I popped my head in at the window of their carriage, and was relieved to see that the gift was in her lap.
“Ah!” said I, “you got it all right! I meant it for you, Alice.”
“Pooh! Didn't we know it?” scoffed the third girl. I didn't know her, but she was evidently a good sort. The train gathered speed.
“What about my answer, Alice?” I demanded, walking alongside the moving carriage.
“What answer?” replied Alice innocently. The other girls were all ears, I could see that, but it couldn't be helped. Now or never was the time.
“The answer to my question ‘Will you marry me’?” I shouted, beginning to run.
“Look out, you'll be getting killed!” cried Alice in alarm. Then, as I still clung desperately to the window: “Yes—no—I'll think it over. Good-bye.”
With that I let go of the carriage window, and the station master buttonholed me and began to discuss the railway rules and regulations in a loud voice. I did'nt mind him. I ate such humble pie that he decided to let me go with a caution, and as soon as he had walked around the corner out of my sight, I forgot him.
Whenever I think of that day I feel proud of myself. Considering I'm supposed to be a shy sort of fellow, I fancy that day takes a lot of beating. It isn't everyone can say they popped the question in front of a railway carriage full of gaping passengers. And look at all the other inconveniences I had to surmount!
The world seemed a jolly good old place as I drove home that day. An extra special sun seemed to be shining, instead of the dull old chap that usually officiated, and the fields and trees all about had a glossy, vital tint, brighter and fresher than I'd ever noticed before. Everything looked so nice that I felt I wanted to loiter on the road and admire, but then it suddenly struck me that if I wanted to win Alice I had to hustle about and make some money. Day dreaming was all very well, but after all what did “yes—no—I'll think it over” mean? It meant that if I could prove that I could keep her in comfort, she might marry me some of these days. It didn't mean that she was bound in any way; it didn't mean that she admitted any love for me; it only meant that if no one else came along in the meantime and snapped her up, while I was carving out a home for her, she'd condescend to consider marrying me.
B-rrr! Crack! “Gid-ap, Bloss!” I hit my lumbering old milk cart horse a whallop, to dispel the gloomy thoughts conjured up, and we rattled back to the farm.
“Work!” That was to be the war-cry.
I didn't let any grass grow under my feet after Alice had told me that she would “think it over.” My first step was to purchase a second-hand Indian motor bike, on the instalment system, and I used to whizz through to Hawera every Sunday and see her.
We were formally engaged about two months after Alice returned to her work, and I had to borrow £20 from my brother Bill in New Plymouth, before I could come to light with the engagement ring.
By this time the second autumn was approaching, and although my cows were doing much better than they had done during the autumn of the first season, I still found myself pinched for money, and it required much stinting and headwork before I was able to pay for all my farm requirements out of the monthly milk cheques.
I was ploughing up old worn out pastures, in addition to the land I had stumped and cleared, and all this had to be put into crops and finally sown down again in good grasses. And this work required money, which had to be found somehow or other, if I ever intended to get ahead of things.
For my eighteen cows I had put in six acres of swede turnips and ten acres of oats for early spring feed the next year, and I confidently expected to do pretty well the following season.
Alice and I had agreed to a long engagement; that would allow me time to arrange about building a new house.
The house was my chief worry. I would have to improve the returns of the farm very considerably before any firm would advance me sufficient money on mortgage to build a house. However, I didn't despair. I had two years before me, and a lot of things could be done in two years, if a man was only in earnest enough.
As soon as my engagement was a recognised fact, I had a quiet yarn with Mrs. Watson about it. I felt that she had helped me in my courtship quite a good deal, and I took the opportunity of telling her so and thanking her.
As Alice was an orphan, I regarded Mrs. Watson as her guardian, and said to her the things I should have considered it right and proper to say to Mrs. Arnold, had she been alive. I said I would make it my life work to keep Alice in comfort and happiness, but I didn't disguise from her the fact that I thought I was far too dull and common a type to be worthy of the girl.
“What nonsense!” replied Mrs. Watson. “If you ask me, Alice is a very lucky girl; far luckier than she deserves.”
Of course I knew she only said that to cheer me up and prevent me from thinking too lowly of myself.
I thought such a lot of Alice at this time that I really believe I regarded her as more than human. Whenever I thought of our engagement I marvelled; it seemed too good to be true, and every now and then I would be filled with unpleasant forebodings and feel that something was going to happen, or that I was going to wake up some fine morning and find it all a dream.
And every Sunday when I saw Alice I used to part from her with a restless unsatisfied feeling, as if she was keeping something back from me. We still had the same difficulty in talking together, and half the time our conversation was at cross purposes. I couldn't seem to follow out her thoughts, and she most decidedly wasn't in sympathy with mine most of the time. The reason, I think, was because I was half afraid of the girl.
If I could have followed my own inclination, I should have been quite content to sit still and just look at the girl, but of course Miss Alice wouldn't have put up with too much of that.
I did learn something, however, about the gentle art of courtship. When in doubt, pay a compliment.
That was the one thing I could always score a hit with, when everything else failed. As soon as I learned this great truth, that a girl is always ready and eager to swallow a compliment, I began to brisk up. Perhaps I even overdid the thing, but if so, I was never taken to task about it.
I've noticed since, how sensible and level-headed girls all have the same little weakness. It doesn't matter how sensible and discerning they are, a tactful compliment neatly turned, fetches a smile every time. It seems to be feminine nature; they have to smile, even if they detest the man who compliments them. Then of course, as they've accepted the homage, they have to be civil in return.
I went out of my way and led the conversation into all sorts of queer byroads in order to work in my flights of sentiment and fancy, but in all my attempts, I never said anything to Alice that I didn't regard as strictly true. I didn't just make up nice things and throw them at her.
At first, shyness prevented me from saying half the nice things that came into my head, but I discovered that was no good. It was all very well to think these things, but I soon found out that Alice was no mind reader; I had to put them into words.
As our intimacy grew I got into the habit of saving up unusual thoughts that occurred to me while at home working, and then trying them on Alice on Sundays when I went to see her. But through it all there was an undercurrent of uneasiness in my heart.
I was too loyal to Alice to attribute the lack of mutual telepathy to want of depth in her; I simply assumed that it was my fault.
I could feel that she did not respond, when I touched on serious subjects, and I supposed that it was because somehow or other I failed to strike the right note. As time went on, I hoped that Alice would
As soon as the winter set in, and the cows were all dry, a fellow named Clive Owens came to me with a proposition.
I had hundreds of cords of good saleable firewood on the back of my farm. It was all in the form of tree trunks, and required to be sawn, split, and then carted, but to good men there was money in the business.
Clive suggested that he and I should go into partnership with it, and split wood all the winter for sale in town. The more I thought over the proposition the more it appealed to me; it would mean a hard winter, but then I thought of the money I would be able to make.
Clive Owens was a returned soldier like myself. He had done no good for himself since getting back to New Zealand, and was considered locally to be rather a rolling stone, as well as a bit of a waster. He liked company, and was often to be seen in town rolling about under the influence of liquor; the thing of all things that country people are down on.
I liked Clive. His boozing habits didn't worry me; he only went on the bust occasionally, and when he did have a spree it was his own money he was spending. Other people could raise their hands in horror if they liked; I much preferred poor old Clive to some of the young men that didn't drink, but instead, went in for being gay dogs and ladies' men. Clive had a free, jolly manner, and his character was written on his face for all to see. Happy-go-lucky, careless and good natured, he was one of those men doomed to go through life from the start—a failure.
His one thought, on receiving his pay, was to get away and spend it. He had tried navvying, working
In spite of shifting about so much, Clive was a good worker while he was on a job, so I accepted his offer about the wood, and he shifted his clothes and blankets into my house and knocked up a bush stretcher to sleep in. All through that winter he and I split and sawed firewood, until by the time it was necessary that I should knock off and attend to the farm work again, we had knocked up a very respectable cheque, averaging £1 a day each all through.
What surprised me most was the way Clive stuck to it, and I did my best to encourage him to turn over a new leaf, thinking that if he once started to save money it might be the making of him.
Just before the commencement of the approaching milking season I made a great change in my prospects and future outlook by buying another fifty acre farm next to my own.
The owner, an old Dane named Axel Johnsen, was in hospital, suffering from some chronic disease. There was no chance of his recovering sufficiently to be able to return and work the place himself, so he approached me to see if I would buy the place from him, lock, stock and barrel.
Axel's terms were so easy that I jumped at the offer. He didn't ask for any cash at all; all he wanted was to sell to a reliable man, so as to be sure of getting the interest every time it was due, and I took the place over just as it stood, with twenty cows, milking-machine, horses, and implements.
There was a good house on Axel's farm, and I think that influenced me more than anything. It meant that I could live there instead of having to worry about raising money to build on my own section.
The two farms combined were capable of “doing” forty cows, and I offered Clive the chance of stopping
Clive and I hit it very well together. We both had a queer kink of humour and could see the kind of joke that most other people couldn't understand after it was explained to them. In addition, I had found Clive to be a good honest worker, which counted for a good deal. If a man is honest in his work, you can usually depend on him in other things.
Clive wanted a week off before commencing work with me on the farm. I knew what it was. The big cheque he had earned wood-splitting was burning a hole in his pocket, and he wanted to get away and cut it out in his usual manner. I persuaded him to start a post office savings bank account, but he did it under protest. He seemed to think it a sheer waste of good money, pushing it over the post office counter in that manner.
Every Sunday, of course, I was away from home seeing my sweetheart, and Clive used to visit the people round about. Although Mr. Treadwell was treating me with the chilly disdain he reserved for people he didn't like, he took quite a fancy to Clive, and used to invite him along to dinner about every other Sunday or so.
Clive had a natural tact, seldom found in such a harum-scarum fellow as he was, and during all the time he was with me I never heard him say anything likely to wound a person's finer feelings. If he ever had occasion to allude to my visits to Alice he did so in a matter of fact, natural manner, not considering the subject as calling for an exhibition of his wit, or anything like that.
Most young fellows, I notice, seem to be under the impression that a man courting is a natural butt for them to practise on. As soon as they find some unfortunate rushing off two or three times a week to visit some girl, the fun commences all around. Unless
But one day he got some news from the old scandal-monger that he thought I ought to hear, and he scared a year's growth out of him by remarking suddenly:
“I can hardly swallow that, Mr. Treadwell, but if it's true, I think old Mark ought to know about it; and if it ain't true, he ought to know all the more. I must tell him.”
“Don't say I told it you—don't say I told it you,” said Mr. Treadwell hastily.
“Well,” said Clive, with a grin, “I'll have to tell him where it comes from, won't I, or he might think it started from me.”
“Don't tell him at all,” said Mr. Treadwell, “Let him find out for himself; he'll find out soon enough.”
Clive gave me the news that evening, in spite of this sage advice. It was serious enough. The Treadwells had got into communication with someone down at Hawera that knew Alice and the aunt with whom she stopped, and the tale they were spreading so industriously was to the effect that Alice never wore her engagement ring during the week, and that some young fellow from out Manaia way was calling and taking her to the pictures twice every week.
“You know, Mark—” apologised Clive, “none of my business, you know, only seems to me a fellow ought to be put wise to that sort of rotten rumour. Then he can take steps.”
I took steps, all right. I waylaid Mr. Treadwell and fairly raved at him, the very next morning. He looked down his nose sulkily, but didn't offer a word in self-defence, and that confirmed my suspicion that the yarn started with him. It wasn't the first of its kind he had launched. The man had a positive genius for that sort of thing. Usually I laughed at him, but this time it was serious; he had dared to cast a shadow on Alice's fair name. After promising what I'd do if I had any more of that sort of thing, I dismissed the matter from my mind. Of course I didn't believe it for a second. To doubt Alice was the very last thing that would have occurred to me.
A day went by. I don't suppose I should have thought another word about the business, only it was recalled to my mind again in a manner there was no ignoring, this time, by Mrs. Watson.
Alice boarded with an aunt, Mrs. Watson's sister, and Mrs. Watson got the news from her. It was true after all, that miserable rumour.
Mrs. Watson almost cried when she spoke to me about it.
“It isn't fair, Mark!” she said, “I won't let Alice do that sort of thing and not say anything. She has a good honourable boy, and she should treat him properly. When you see her, put your foot down firmly, even if it means breaking with her. If you don't you'll never be able to manage her afterwards. Now is the time to have an understanding, once for all.”
I couldn't reply. I was busy swallowing a lump in my throat as big as a duck's egg. Finally I managed to pull myself together, and said:
“I expect Alice has a good reason for anything she has done. I'll see her on Sunday, anyhow, and she'll be able to explain.” My heart was sick and
I went through to Hawera that Sunday, and we thrashed the thing out. Alice never attempted to deny the rumour. Instead of that she took up rather a peculiar attitude.
Yes, she went to the pictures Tuesdays and Fridays, with a “friend.” Surely I didn't expect her to mope at home every evening, just because she had the misfortune to be engaged to me? If I was so much against her going out of an evening, for a little innocent enjoyment, why didn't I come through and take her myself? She was sure it made no difference to her who took her.
I said: “Of course, Alice, I don't expect you to remain cooped up inside every evening, only is it wise to go about with one man so much? Who is this ‘friend’? Is there any danger of his becoming more than a ‘friend’?”
“Suppose there is?” flashed Alice, defiantly. “It's all your fault! You leave me here, week in, week out, while you go about enjoying yourself.”
I sighed at that. My way of enjoying myself was by toiling from daylight until after dark, all day long, in order to get a home together worthy of her.
But I knew Alice too well to start an argument over her statement.
“Look here, little lady,” said I, “You know it isn't that I don't trust you. I think so much of you that I feel sure you will play the game; only, Alice, what about this other poor beggar? Is it fair to him? It isn't to be expected that he can keep from falling in love with you, if you go about with him. Perhaps he's in love already.”
“Pooh! What nonsense!” replied Alice. “It's simply a platonic friendship. I must have some amusement in this dull hole, or I'll die of sheer ennui, so
She took her engagement ring, and twirled it between finger and thumb: “Perhaps you would like to be released, Mr. Woodford?”
“Good God! Don't talk in that way, Alice!” I exclaimed.
“Well,” she returned, “It's the usual thing, isn't it. If you are not satisfied with my conduct I see no use in our keeping up the engagement.”
“I've told you—” I burst forth, “everything you do is right, as far as I'm concerned. Put the ring back on your finger, dear, I hate to see it off like that.”
“Perhaps I don't want to put it back?” said Alice, with a lift of her eyebrows.
It was just as I had always feared. Our first serious difference, and I was reduced to a state of pitiful dread, while Alice was coolly, calmly, weighing the thing out in her mind, and deliberating as to whether she would continue or sever the engagement.
I made an unconditional surrender, and as soon as I had done that Alice dropped her hard, aloof bearing and broke down at once.
“Oh, I'm such a wretch!” she exclaimed, her face crinkling with emotion. “Poor, poor, Mark!” We were conversing in the drawing room of her aunt's house, and I moved up close and took her little hand in mine.
“Don't blame yourself, Alice,” I said earnestly. To see her crying brought me right to my knees. “Of course I know it has been slow and lonely for you. My farm is paying all right, now. Suppose we get married this winter? Then you won't have to work miles away from me any more.”
Alice snuggled up close and leaned her head against my shoulder.
“And I'll get a situation in Stratford in the meantime,” said she. “I know I can, and then we can see each other oftener.”
I heaved a sigh of relief at that. If Alice could contemplate so coolly moving to Stratford, she evidently wasn't very much enamoured with this Leslie.
I supported the suggestion with enthusiasm, and left Hawera that afternoon, a very much happier man than I had entered it.
But I wasn't satisfied. I was frightened to the depths of my soul. The day's conversation with Alice had shown me only too clearly, how small a hold I had on her fancy. It only needed some little thing to offend her, and I could see what was likely to happen. She would cast me adrift with as little compunction as she would throw away a faded flower.
In little country districts everybody's business is always everybody else's, and it wasn't long before all my neighbours were aware that Alice Arnold was working in Stratford. I still used to pay her my Sunday visit, but in addition to that I was able to slip into town once or twice during the week as well.
She really did exert herself to be nice to me at this period; I think she felt it was up to her to try and make up to me for the fright she had given me over Mr. Leslie. I don't think I ever had prouder moments than the occasions on which I was escorting little Alice about to different places. Just to see her tripping along lightly at my side used to fill me with a sense of wonder. Sad to say, my presence had quite an opposite effect upon her. There was hardly a visit I paid her, but she found fault with some portion of my wardrobe. Just to please, I turned myself into a perfect dude during those few months. It went against the grain, too, because if it hadn't been for Alice I'd sooner have died than have donned some of the styles she liked. Her glance of approval, however, paid for all the torture. If she liked coloured socks and loud ties, then they must be in taste, that was how I argued the matter, because she certainly knew how to dress in taste herself. Sometimes, as we were walking about the street of Stratford, other
I still used to drop in on the Watsons every little while. Elsie Watson was growing into a fine woman.
“Just think, Mark,” she said to me, one day, “we are quite old friends. Why, when you came here first I had hardly left school, and now I'm eighteen.
“You don't seem eighteen to me,” I laughed. “Just a bit of a kid.”
“Oh yes, of course!” said Elsie. “You can't see anyone at all except your wonderful Alice; that we all know.”
There seemed a tinge of bitterness in her words, and I glanced at her in surprise. It was strange to hear sweet, gentle little Elsie Watson saying anything in that tone, and especially about her cousin Alice.
“What's up, little sister?” said I, “Don't you feel up to the mark to-day?”
Little sister was the pet name I had given to Elsie long before. She was such a sympathetic little thing that I was always sure of a kindly reception from her if I felt moody or downhearted. She seemed to be able to tell how I felt by some sort of instinct, but on this occasion she rather surprised me. Instead of making some smiling answer, as she usually did, when I addressed her in that way she flushed up angrily, and said:
“Mark, sometimes I think you're quite a fool!” and then flounced out of the room, almost in tears.
I couldn't think what was wrong. In all our almost three years of pally friendship, Elsie had never before given evidence of being a girl of moods. Had it been Alice, I should have known exactly what to
Elsie was different. I had never bothered to try and talk up to Elsie, or pick my words; we were always such good friends that speech didn't matter at all; if I didn't feel like talking I wasn't expected to.
After Elsie had flounced out of the room in what looked to me uncommonly like a burst of temper, I sat silent and confounded. A minute passed, and she failed to return and explain herself, so I went out to find her and see what was wrong.
Mrs. Watson was in the kitchen, rolling out a batch of scones, when I arrived there, but no sign of her daughter.
“I can't think what I must have said to offend Elsie,” said I, in consternation. “She rushed away almost in tears.”
Mrs. Watson put down her rolling pin and sighed deeply.
“Girls are strange creatures, Mark,” she said. “You never will be able to understand them, so just take no notice of her. My little girl is growing up, and I suppose she has whims and fancies that we don't know anything about. It doesn't take much to upset us sometimes,” she concluded, with a laugh.
I felt she was just saying that to relieve my mind, because her voice had a sad note in it that belied the laugh at the end of her words.
“By Jove!” exclaimed I, with a flash of inspiration. “Perhaps she's in love? If so, that accounts for everything. I know enough about that to know that it excuses any sort of temperamental turn.”
“If she is,” replied Mrs. Watson, “she is keeping it to herself.”
“There's nobody about here half good enough for Elsie,” I declared warmly.
I left for home soon after this, without having seen my little friend again, and the thought of what had occurred worried me until my next visit.
“How did I tread on your toes last time I was here?” I asked, on meeting her again.
“Don't be silly, old Mark!” she returned. “You didn't tread on them. I suppose I got out of bed on the wrong side. You mustn't imagine you are the only person in the world subject to fits and starts of temper,” she ended playfully.
“Now, now!” said I, “Don't rub it in. I know I am supposed to have a fair share of it, that's if you listen to Mr. Treadwell on the subject—but you are not subject to such a failing, I'm sure. I haven't known you for three years to be in doubt of that.”
Elsie refused any further explanation, however, and we changed the subject after that, and commenced to discuss plans for the entertainment of Alice on her next holidays at the farm. The time was drawing nigh again, and we intended to give her as royal a time of it as was possible, on her arrival.
With Clive Owens to help me on the farm, and milking machines to lighten the work, I found I was getting well ahead of things. Clive was a treasure. We were so well fitted to pull together that our very failings seemed to be more of a help than otherwise. For instance, my impatient and hustling disposition was counteracted to a certain extent by the fact that easygoing Clive was on hand to laugh at me whenever I tried to do too much, while slow-going Clive was forced, by my bustling example, to keep up some semblance of speed. Not that Clive was lazy by any means, but he was a very deliberate, thorough worker; too
In all the things that really mattered, such as personal conduct and points of honour, we seemed to see practically eye to eye, and we never jarred on one another's nerves as some people do.
As yet, Clive hadn't seen Alice, and I was anxiously waiting a chance to introduce them, because he had agreed to stop on for another year. I wanted them to like each other, as Alice and I were to be married as soon as the winter arrived, and it would be awkward if they failed to hit it together. Also, I was proud of my fiancee, proud of my friend Clive, and I felt sure my judgment was all right in both cases, and that they would both think so.
As soon as ever Alice arrived for her holiday, Clive and I went to call. That fortnight was one of the happiest I had ever spent. Alice approved of my friend at once and set my mind completely at rest on that score. What pleased me more than anything was the amusement she derived from his conversation.
When it came to humour Clive and I were practically a pair; the same jokes always amused us, although perhaps I had a more subtle appreciation than he. If Alice could laugh with him, I knew very well she could laugh with me, and I explained her peculiar conduct in always seeming to miss the point, whenever I made a joke, by concluding that she did it for disciplinary reasons. She had to keep me down a little bit, otherwise I might be getting above myself with swelled head. In a lover girls prefer humility and worship, rather than undue familiarity, and too much laughing and joking spoils the romance of the thing. So I thought, but now I know better than that.
Girls like being kissed and hugged and squeezed, with plenty of laughter and jollity mixed with the treatment, that's the conclusion I've arrived at, and the fellow who goes in for this blind worshipping
As Alice hadn't yet seen the house she was to live in, we decided to make up a party and hold a house inspection. Mrs. Watson, Elsie, and Alice were to call on the following afternoon and go over the place. I thought it a good chance for them to suggest any improvements I might effect before furnishing and repapering.
The house itself was a six-roomed bungalow, with two brick chimneys, and was rather a nice place. Axel Johnsen had been a handy man with carpenters' tools, and had kept the place in good repair, as well as making sundry improvements on the original plan. From the front, he had continued the veranda all around the sunny side of the house, having doors opening out on it from the dining room and drawing room.
The grounds were nicely fenced in with live hedges, and all the paths leading to the front gate, wood shed, and garden, were of concrete. This, for the country, was a real luxury.
There was a small orchard on one side, and a piece of grassed down lawn large enough for a tennis court on the other. Of course Clive and I didn't bother trying to keep the place tidy, and everything about it looked wild and run to seed, but all the same it was a place that could be kept nice, and would well repay any interest taken in it.
“This will be your kingdom, Alice,” said I, indicating a wilderness of flowers and weeds.
“Me! Goodness!” declared Alice. “I couldn't be bothered with trying to garden; I detest that kind of work.” She moved on impatiently, and commenced to give Clive instructions as to how he should behave when visitors came to the house. Clive was in the kitchen, laughing at us from out the window.
“Ladies and gentlemen—” commenced he. “Behold in me the grand master of ceremonies. Pray step inside, and I will escort you over the precincts in person.” He threw open the door with a flourish: “Enter the Vice-Regal compartments! Anything you see that you think you'd like, slip into your pockets. If it's too heavy, come back with a waggon later on.”
Clive showed them over the house. I had no furniture of any description, having postponed buying until I could get Alice to consent to select it herself. That didn't affect Clive, however.
“This, ladies and gentlemen——” said he, with an airy wave of his hand, “Is the kitchenette. Note the up-to-date arrangement of aluminium ware——” and he drew their attention to the two cut down kerosene tins we used for boiling potatoes and meat.
“And what's this?” demanded Elsie, lifting a dirty (very dirty) cloth off the corner of the box we used as a table.
“Oh, that——” said Clive, hardly giving it a glance. “In here, arranged upon this shelf, ladies, is the preservatory.” He pointed to a two pound tin of cheap jam and half a bottle of pickles.
“Never mind your preservatory,” interrupted Mrs. Watson. “What do you two bachelors use this filthy rag for?” Elsie lifted it by a corner as the question was put and shook it before Clive's unseeing eyes.
“Yes,” continued Clive, quite unabashed, “having seen all there is of interest here, we will now proceed to the drawing room, and inspect the old Chippendale and stained oak.”
“No we won't!” said Elsie determinedly. “As you are doing the honours of the mansion, Mr. Clive, you will please explain everything as you go along. What duty is this horrid rag used for?”
Clive eyed the rag as if he'd never seen it in his life before, took a deep breath, and said affably: “Certainly! I quite agree with you, Miss Watson. I think you speak very sensibly. As Mark said to me only
“Why!” shrieked Alice, “I do believe they use that horrid rag as a dish cloth!”
A silence; then Clive said, in a chastened voice: “Well, now you know, I hope you're all satisfied.”
It's a wonder you don't both catch fever!” marvelled Mrs. Watson. “Put it outside, dear—and then wash your hands.”
When Elsie returned, drying her hands on her pocket handkerchief—after refusing the doubtful looking towel I offered her—Clive took heart and commenced again.
“The guests will adjourn to the drawing room,” he announced pompously. “Madam, kindly take my arm——” and he proffered Alice his ridiculously kinked out elbow, Alice hooked on with a giggle, and they sailed importantly through the door, into the big central living room. It was a litter of dust, sacks, old newspapers and rubbish generally, but according to Clive it represented sixteenth century decoration, and the solitary benzine case there was a genuine King Louis armchair, size 9.
Mrs. Watson entered the room after them, lifting her skirts and stepping gingerly, and Elsie pressed up to me and squeezed my hand. That meant sympathy, from little Elsie, and I looked at her in surprise. I had been enjoying the nonsense hugely, and yet, there was she, with tears in her eyes.
“What's wrong, old lady?”
“Nothing, Mark.”
“Yes there is,” said I, “I do believe you feel sorry for me, because I live in such a wild place, you tender-hearted little goose.”
“You may as well think that as anything else, I suppose,” was her unsatisfactory reply. I gazed at her in absolute amazement. Elsie was keeping me guessing in quite a lot of ways, just at that time.
“Never mind,” I said, “It won't be long now, before all this is changed. Another few months, and Alice and I will be married and then you'll see a difference.”
Elsie puzzled me even more, with her reply.
“Mark,” she said, “I've told you before, and I'm beginning to believe what I say; I believe you are the simplest man in the world.”
That was a nice bombshell to drop on a fellow without warning! After that I didn't try to understand her any more, and we rejoined the others. I felt a bit piqued. I didn't profess to be a know-all, but I didn't consider myself so simple as all that came to.
“Whatever do you use this thing for?” enquired Mrs. Watson, as I entered the room.
“That!” replied I, “That's a broom. We sweep up with that—when it needs it.”
The ladies glanced around disdainfully. “I suppose it will need it in another year or so?” said Elsie sweetly.
“Well, you see,” I explained, “we don't live in this room much, and it seems a pity to keep on sweeping out a room when nobody comes into it. Seems like waste of work.”
“Yes, but you could brush out the kitchen occasionally; that wouldn't overtax your strengths,” reproached Alice.
“Here, come off that!” exclaimed Clive indignantly. “I swept out the kitchen myself, only last night. In purpose for this visit, as a matter of fact.”
“That's exactly what it looks like!” countered Alice. “Come on, auntie, let's get outside. I'm sure there must be fleas, and all sorts of crawly insects in this awful place.” Trust Miss Alice to put the damper
I had been eagerly looking forward to this visit from her, and picturing in my mind how we would go around the place together and examine the wallpaper, and decide on what brand of carpets we'd have, and all that sort of thing. Instead of that, instead of examining her future home, she might have been looking over some new kind of dog kennel at the Stratford Show, for all the real interest she displayed.
After a cursory inspection of our hard case looking crockery, as they went back through the kitchen, the ladies refused my tentative offer of afternoon tea and took their departure.
It was getting on in the afternoon, so I went off to muster up the cows for the evening milking. On thinking over the events of the afternoon I felt more satisfied. Of course it was silly of me to expect Alice to “gush” over the place. Her natural modesty would prevent her from making suggestions, or in any way trying to influence me concerning the house, while in the presence of third persons.
I told myself I expected too much, and it served me right when Alice gave me set backs. She had to do it, to keep her independence of thought. If I had my way, I argued, I would have the poor girl transformed into a mere shadow of myself, without a single thought or impulse of her own. I fear I dwelt on that possibility a little too long, in my meditations; really there was no reason for worrying; up to then Alice hadn't shown much sign of bowing down to my superior will-power.
As we stripped out our last shed of cows that evening, Clive suddenly surprised me by remarking: “Mark, do you know this, I believe I'll have to break out in a good old woolly spree, pretty soon. I can feel all the signs coming over me. Perhaps a real killing whisky headache might disperse them.”
“What's up?” said I.
“I don't know. I've got a discontented, restless feeling,” returned Clive. “I've felt it coming on for some days. It isn't the first time I've had it, so don't be surprised if I break out. I've had a good spell here, but once I get the craving properly, I just have to obey the call.”
“Don't be a blooming fool!” was my unsympathetic rejoinder. “Fight against it. Don't go and spoil everything, after being on the water waggon for so long.”
“I've been fighting against it all my life, off and on,” said Clive, “but I always lose.”
Clive had been practically a teetotaller for the eight or nine months he had been with me, and had saved up a good lump of money. It was the first time in his life he had ever enjoyed the dignity of possessing a banking account, and once started he had grown enthusiastic. His intention was to keep adding to the nest egg until he had sufficient in hand as a deposit on a farm, and then he thought to begin farming on his own.
I was feeling rather proud of him, and took a good deal of the credit to myself. It would be more than a pity, I thought, to see him relapse.
He said no more at the time, but his words had made me sit up and take notice. Certainly he was not his usual carefree, happy self. His thoughts were wandering half the time, and his efforts to cover up his absence of mind were enough to make a cat laugh. For the next two or three days this was increasingly noticeable. He would make the porridge in the morning, and forget to put the salt in it, and stir his tea aimlessly for minutes at a time without adding the sugar. There was no doubt that Clive was not himself; evidently the wild strain he inherited from a shiftless and drunken father, was not to be conquered without a fight.
If it hadn't been that I knew nobody he was soft on I should have said the man was in love; all the
Clive came of a worthless stock; his father a shiftless drunkard, his brothers a wild and rowdy crew. Always recognised as the best of the family, he had enjoyed a somewhat unenviable name himself, and his long spell in my employment had surprised a good many people. I hoped he wasn't going to break out again, after being steady for so long. I knew the call was almost irresistible, when it came upon him, and I felt I could hardly blame him, if he did break out in a wild jag for a day or so, but I was afraid. If it was only to be a few days spree, not much harm could result, but Clive on the war-path, with over a hundred pounds in the bank—where was it going to end? Probably by his coming to his senses after the last of the money was spent.
To a man like Clive that would be the last straw. Disgusted and filled with the sense of his own failure, he would pack up his swag and depart to where he was not known. And the knowledge that in a week of drunken folly he had squandered the hard-earned savings of eight months, would in all likelihood discourage him from ever attempting to save again.
I saw it coming. It was a pity, a great pity, but there was nothing to do but let things take their course. I couldn't chain the man up until the craving had left his system; I wished with all my heart I could.
And after all, it might be only a false alarm.
Mr. Treadwell said it was all very well, me showing off my flash house to a few silly women, but he bet I didn't bother to point out that it was situated in a hollow, and that the borer was in the lining.
He predicted that when I got married, and Alice and I started house-keeping together, the first thing to happen would be a doctor's bill for pneumonia, because he was sure that Alice was weak in the chest, and that damp, sour house would kill her within a year.
As he seemed to know all our business, people took a good deal of notice of him. “You know——” he would say, “Where's Woodford going to raise the money for decent furniture? He can't do it! The man must be up to his eyes in debt as it is, with all the grass seed and top-dressing he's been buying lately. Anyone can see what his game is. He's going to buy up a lot of old, second-hand stuff—that's what he'll do. Sensible, too!” he would add, “Because if he did put new furniture in that house, the borer would have it ruined in no time.”
As a matter of fact I had thought of asking Alice if she would mind us economising with some secondhand stuff, but when I heard how old Tready had almost read my thoughts about it, I decided for all new. The borer he made so much of was in the lining of one room, which had evidently been finished off with sappy timber, but I tore all that out and replaced it with good sound stuff.
I left the repapering of the rooms until last of all, but I thought that while Alice was stopping at her aunt's would be a good chance to buy the furniture, as I wanted them to do the selecting.
With that idea in my mind I arranged to drive Mrs. Watson and Alice into town one day.
I had an order for £75 worth of furniture that I had applied for from the Repatriation Department, and with the £75 of my own that I was able to add to it, Mrs. Watson said was quite enough to buy sticks to start with. I gave it to her and said: “There you are, ladies, just go ahead, buy what you please, and leave me right out of it.”
“Aren't you coming in with us?” enquired Alice.
“I'd sooner not,” I replied. “It will leave you more free to discuss things, I think, if I'm not with you. I'll keep out of the way until three o'clock, and then call around and take you both to afternoon tea.”
“Perhaps that will be the best way,” murmured Alice. “Only don't be cross if we choose things you don't like.”
“Don't you be a foolish little girl,” I told her. “Anything you like will just have to please me.”
That kind of rejoinder always pleased Alice, and she touched my face lightly with her finger tips, and said, in a low voice:
“Sometimes you seem quite a nice boy, Markus.” That, from Alice, was worth pages of compliments from other girls, and left me feeling pleased and conceited with myself for the rest of the day.
At 3.30 p.m. I met the ladies, and we went to the marble bar for refreshments. They had spent all the money except £30, which Mrs. Watson thought it might be wise to keep for a while, in case they had forgotten anything.
The purchases were to be packed up immediately, and I was to remove them from the shops and stow them at home. As our marriage was arranged for the last week in May, we hadn't very much longer to prepare, and both Alice and I were doing some quiet worrying over ways and means.
Alice had never managed to save any money all the time she had been working for herself, and the trousseau was her concern, whilst although I was doing fairly well on the farm, I was far from being a rich man, and the numerous expenses that kept cropping up were a sore tax on my resources.
Before Alice went back to Stratford, Mrs. Watson arranged a picnic in her honour. It was the last year Alice would be there as a single girl, she said, and she thought we ought to celebrate the occasion in some way or other.
We organised all the people in the district, and went up to Mt. Egmont National Reserve. The Reserve is a dense forest, all around the foot of the mountain; much too wild and rough a place for picnicking, but at the edge of it there are some really lovely nooks, and sweet smelling valleys running out into the clear, and it was one of these little valleys we picked on to hold our party.
The site we chose was in the bend of a shallow, gravelly bottomed stream. The sun poured right down on to our strip of sandy river beach, but all we had to do for shade was move under the shelter of an overhanging bank of luxurious foliage close at our back. Five-finger, tu-tu, koromiko and gigi hung in tangled profusion all along the river-bank, and we could please ourselves as to whether we took a sun bath or found comfort in the shade. The place was simply ideal.
The party included both Treadwell boys, of course—they were never known to miss anything like that—Stan Collins, both the Wilcox's, Clive and myself; there were four or five other girls besides Alice and Elsie, and a host of small children with their parents.
All the big girls expressed a longing for Prince of Wales plume ferns, so it was decided to make up an expedition into the bush and search for them. Of course cavaliers volunteered as escort immediately. I fell in alongside Alice in a natural manner; if there was to be any escorting of ladies I knew where my duty lay, but that didn't suit the lady at all.
“Oh, no! Mr. Mark!” said she, “As this picnic is in my honour, your place to-day is to stop here and boil the kettles for the afternoon tea.”
I was disappointed, but I saw that she was right, and dropped back dejectedly. I had found out long ago that when there were other men about, it was no use paying Alice too much attention. She seemed to regard it as my duty and privilege to stand aside and allow her elbow room for fresh conquests. As she usually had someone fluttering about, getting their
I comforted myself with the reflection that she was having her final fling, before settling down to staid married life, and although I didn't like it, I bit on the bullet and held my peace.
With respect to her mandate that I should remain behind to act as camp cook, I quite agreed with the principle of it; someone had to do the work, and as I was the person chiefly interested in seeing that Alice's picnic was a success, it was up to me to do my share towards making it so. I watched the laughing party of young people disappear into the shade of the forest, and then turned to my task.
A quantity of driftwood had been heaped up on the bank, washed there by the mountain flood rains, and I collected some of this and started a fire. Once the fire was going properly I found some stakes, sharpened the ends of them with a knife, and drove them crosswise into the earth at each side of the fire to make a hanger for the kettle.
The married ladies had spread out rugs on the sand above the water line, and had the food all carefully covered up. They were busy unpacking cups and plates, and chattering gossip, while most of the youngsters were away down the creek paddling in the shallow water.
I went along to enquire what I should use to boil the water in, and noticed Elsie Watson carving her name on a tawa tree close by.
“Why, El!” I exclaimed, “How is this? Why aren't you away with the rest gathering plume ferns?”
“I didn't want to go, that's why,” replied Elsie.
“That's bad,” said I, “And not a gay cavalier in the mob had the sense to stop behind! I'll have to tell those young men about this when they return.”
“Pooh! I should just like to have seen them dare to try!” replied Elsie, with a toss of her head. “They
“Well, why don't you give poor old Arty some encouragement, and help the poor fellow?” I enquired. “I'm sure he's smitten with you; I noticed his great big goo-goo eyes following you around the whole evening at the last dance.”
“Arty?” she laughed. “My word, Mark, you must think a lot of your little friend, if you can consider marrying her off to Arty.”
“I'm only joking, my dear,” I returned. “Come along, help me boil this jolly old pot. The afternoon won't be wasted after all now I have you to talk to.”
Elsie sat down on a log close by, while I stoked up the fire and hung the pot of water over it by means of a length of fencing wire. Then I sat down beside her and we had a long comfortable talk together.
Elsie Watson was about the only girl I knew that I could enjoy talking to. I had known her for so long that in my mind I still regarded her as rather a child. Talking to Alice was a distinct effort; it's a wonder I didn't strain my intellect sometimes, thinking out interesting conversation for her. With Elsie it was different. I knew where I was all the time. She didn't expect me to jump through conversational hoops; we just exchanged thoughts and expressed them as they came into our minds. If I used slang she took no notice, whereas Alice was death on that sort of thing.
“When you are married, I suppose we won't be really, truly friends any more?” said Elsie.
“Why not?” said I, in some surprise.
“Oh, well! It's hard to explain, but I know we won't be,” replied Elsie, eyeing me with a serious expression. “Platonic friendships always fall to the ground after one of the friends get married.”
“I don't see that at all!” I remonstrated. “I bet I come along to see my little sister, just the same.”
“I know you'll come along, Mark, but it won't be the same as before.”
That was all I could get out of Elsie. She refused to give any reason for her belief, but simply took refuge in the statement that “It wouldn't be the same.”
“Do you feel very, very happy, Mark?” she enquired, changing the subject.
“I'll be glad when it's all settled,” I replied. “I'm happy, and yet I'm not, if you can get my meaning. I feel nervous and unsettled. Sometimes, even now, I have a horrible feeling, like a bad dream, that seems to warn me that something is going to happen and come between us. I know it's all rot—nerves, I suppose, but it keeps me worried.”
“You should go with her, when she goes off as she has to-day,” said Elsie quietly.
“It's not that, Elsie. Alice likes me to give her a little freedom, and my regard for her wouldn't be up to much, if I felt I had to follow her about every time she went anywhere.”
“Y-yes,” admitted Elsie, doubtfully. “I suppose your way of looking at the thing is the right way.”
“Now, look here, young lady,” said I, “Just put yourself in Alice's place. If you were engaged, and your adored one kept following you about jealously, as if he were afraid to trust you out of his sight, what would you do?”
“I wouldn't get engaged to such a suspicious pig,” declared Elsie emphatically.
“Good answer!” said I approvingly. “Neither would Alice! And that's the reason,” I concluded, “that I give her such an absolutely free hand. She loves and respects me sufficiently to take the most important step in life with me, and if she has enough confidence in me to do that, I have enough confidence in her to trust her.”
I paused, then went on. “Love without trust, is a pretty poor thing—and even if she does indulge in an idle flirtation or so, what does it matter?”
I tried to think in my heart that it didn't matter, but Elsie's quick glance of surprised disapproval spurred me on to further explanations and excuses.
“You know, Elsie,” I went on, “Alice is different from you. She must have a certain amount of gaiety and life; it's her nature, whereas you are such a placid little puss, that a good book and a quiet nook, are more to you than a hundred gallant swains.”
“Yes,” said Elsie. “But if I had one gallant swain—the right one, he would be more to me than all the books or anything else in the world.”
She glanced straight at me, with her brown eyes wistfully serious, then flushed deeply, and turned quickly away.
“By Jove, Elsie!” I exclaimed, “I believe you! And it will be a lucky man that captures your heart; he'll have a prize I hope he'll have sense enough to appreciate. Of all the girls I know, I don't think there's any of them can approach you for real genuine depth.”
“Not even the wonderful Alice?” asked Elsie with a smile.
“Oh, she's different!” answered I. “To tell you the truth, old lady, I never think of weighing Alice in the scales with anyone. I just consider her as perfect, and think that criticism or comparison would be disloyal to her.”
“You're a silly old Don Quixote,” chided Elsie. “Here come the girls!”
The fern seekers had split into couples, and I think I sighed a sigh of relief when I found that Alice and Clive were together. I always felt comfortable and contented in my mind when they were amusing each other, because Clive was such a good chap.
With Stan or the Treadwells it was quite on the cards that they would snatch a kiss from a girl, engaged or otherwise, if they saw half an opening. Some fellows seem to have the idea that it's the proper and manly course to take, and that not to kiss a girl, if they saw an opportunity, would be almost a crime.
When all the party had arrived at the base, we inspected the prizes. None of the searchers had found Prince of Wales ferns. They grow on the slopes above the reserve bush, and it was too dangerous to try and force a way through to that altitude, on account of the dense undergrowth and lack of proper tracks. Kidney and maidenhair ferns were to be found in abundance, and everyone had been satisfied to collect them.
Alice came and sat beside me during our picnic meal, and we stirred our tea with the same spoon and squabbled over the last scone.
It was a glorious day, and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. The whole countryside seemed to be humming with insect and bird life. The youngsters soon finished eating, and went back to paddle in the cool, shallow stream, chasing the dozens of mountain trout about and occasionally catching an odd one. The young men skylarked about, while the girls giggled and chattered with them.
Clive alone sat silent and preoccupied. I wondered if he still felt like going off on a mad spree, or if he was fighting the idea.
“Come, and we will stow your ferns away in the gig,” I said to Alice, as soon as everyone had finished eating. She followed me obediently, and as soon as we were out of earshot I said:
“Has Clive mentioned anything to you about going off on a holiday, Alice?”
Alice started, and turned a deep red.
“No! Why should you ask me? Why should he tell me?” she asked in a flurried manner.
“I hoped perhaps he had,” I replied. “I can see he likes you, and he might tell you before he would me. But if he hasn't—he hasn't.” I paused for a moment, then thought I would take Alice into my confidence. “To tell you the honest truth, Alice,” I continued, “I'm worried about old Clive. He's got something on his mind. He and I are such good pals that I can tell at a glance when anything's wrong with him. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to see him kick over the traces pretty soon—you know he used to be a wild sort of fellow before he came to work with me.”
“Pooh! I suppose he isn't feeling very well,” said Alice. “Are you such great friends?” she asked, curiously.
“The best in the world,” replied I. “I don't ever remember taking such a fancy to a man before. I'd do anything for Clive, and I think he would for me, too.”
“But if he leaves you? That won't be very nice of him, will it?” asked Alice.
“Clive isn't like me,” I said slowly. “He's good at heart, but he has such a thoughtless nature that he won't think of that. But he'll never leave me in the lurch,” I added. “I'm sure of that much. When he does decide to go he'll give me a week's notice, at the least, and that will enable me to get a man to take his place. But perhaps he won't go,” I added hopefully. “Perhaps I'm only worrying myself for nothing, but I'm nervous about him. He's stopped with me longer than anywhere, since he came back from the War, and I'd hate to see him break out now, just as he has some money saved up.”
“Yes, but because he leaves you is not to say that he intends to spend all his money,” pointed out Alice. “Mark, I think you are mistaken in Clive, quite a good bit. He isn't the weak person you think him—and he
I glanced at her and noticed the colour flooding to her cheeks and neck.
“Why, Alice!” I exclaimed, “I thought you liked him? That belief has given me very great pleasure, this holiday of yours.”
“Yes, I do like him,” admitted Alice, in a low voice. “So don't say I haven't told you—but I can see he has faults.”
She looked up at me, still flushed, and laughed: “That's enough serious talk; tell me how I look.”
“You look like the morning sunrise reflected on Egmont's snow, when you blush like that,” I assured her.
“Yes, go on.”
“And your eyes are brighter than the dew glistening on fresh grown grass,” I continued.
She made a little move: “All right—it will have to do for my eyes. What next?”
“Your voice is as sweet and clear as the notes of yonder tui, your figure as graceful, your back as straight, as yonder stately pine. You carry your head with the poise and dignity of yonder cabbage tree-top——”
“Oh, do I? How dare you liken my head to a cabbage-top?”
That was Alice all over! As soon as I was strung up to be really eloquent, something like that was bound to happen to squash me.
It wasn't the slightest use trying to point out to her how gracefully that cabbage tree top bowed and swayed in the breeze. No! I had called her cabbage head, and no explanations or excuses were allowed.
She flounced back to the party, with me following up concernedly, and making humble and unavailing apologies to the back of her proud little head—and my reign was over for that day.
I didn't let it worry me unduly, however. I was getting about used to that sort of treatment, and knew it would all be forgotten by the next time we met.
The ladies were packing up the crockery and things ready for the home going when we arrived, and I went to help Mrs. Watson with her plates and baskets.
“Have you and Alice quarrelled?” she said to me on noticing that Alice didn't come to help.
“Oh, nothing much!” I replied. “She objected to one of my flowers of speech, that's all”
“Only that?” she said, smiling. “What was it, Mark?”
“I likened the poise of her head to the swaying top of a cabbage tree,” I replied, with a grin. “And she accused me of calling her cabbage head.”
Mrs. Watson almost spluttered: “My goodness!” she exclaimed, “That's just like Miss Alice! I pity you, young man, when you do get married.”
Alice left to go back to work again, soon after the picnic and life settled down into the usual routine of plenty of work, and visits to see her twice or thrice a week.
I was occupied stumping a very rough piece of ground at the back of the farm about this time, and Clive and I were slogging away at it every spare hour we could get. We were busy digging around a particularly stubborn rata stump one day, when Clive straightened up suddenly and said: “It's no use, Mark! I'm fed up to the neck with this game.”
I looked at him. His usually good-humoured face was clouded with discontent, and his voice had a petulant ring in it I had not often heard.
“Well, take a day off,” I suggested. “Perhaps you are a little off colour.”
“No, I'm quite fit,” declared Clive. “It isn't that. I've simply lost all interest in work. I want a change. I think——” he went on, “I had better go into town and try and get a man to take my place here for a time. Perhaps if I have a week or so off, I might settle down to it again.”
“Just please yourself, Clive,” I told him. “Only if you go, never mind about finding a man to take your place; I can manage until you return.”
I said that because it struck me, that if he did go, and someone came in his place, it was more than probable he wouldn't come back. He might feel it wouldn't be fair to the other man, if he returned, to oust him from the job.
“All right,” said Clive, “I'll pack up at midday, if that will suit you.”
“I wish you would change your mind, Clive,” I said. “But if you must go, go when it suits you the best. What do you think of doing?”
“Oh, I'll just go on a sort of kick round,” he replied vaguely.
“Well, you're a blooming chump!” I couldn't help telling him. “Just as you have a little money saved up, you want to go and blow it all in.”
“No, not me,” said Clive, “I don't intend to go throwing money about. All I want is a complete change for a while.”
In spite of this assertion I knew Clive well enough to be sure that once he started on that money nothing could stop him from burning the lot. I remonstrated further, but he showed signs of getting irritable and touchy—another strange thing with him—so I gave over and we worked away in silence until midday.
After lunch I gave Clive his cheque up to date and left him packing his swag, and when I got back to the house again at 4 o'clock, before going to muster the cows, he was gone, bag and baggage.
It was a summary leave-taking, after being with me for so long, and I felt inclined to be hurt, but I felt more sorrow than pique. Poor old Clive! Evidently it was in his blood, and he had to obey the call. He had well over a £100 in the savings bank, and if he drew that out and splashed it, the chances were he would never have the heart to try again.
I milked my forty cows single-handed, after he was gone. It was not a difficult job, with milking machines. It simply meant that I took a little longer because I had to hang up a set of cups every now and then, when I found myself becoming bustled.
The autumn advanced. Clive didn't come back. I heard about him, although I didn't hear from him. He had taken work with some contractor, and used to put in eight hours a day standing up to his knees in some river, loading great boulders into drays. I knew that was gruelling work, even for the strongest man, but it was good money.
If Clive was doing that for a living, there was good reason to think that he hadn't spent his savings after all; evidently the possession of a certain amount had made him impatient to get more, and he was thinking of bigger money when he left me.
His queer way of going, and his failure to write after he had started elsewhere, showed that his leaving me was something more than just unrest. It seemed strange to me, and the more I pondered over it the more hurt I felt, because I had made almost a brother of Clive while he was with me. I remembered Alice's words at the picnic, that she “thought I was mistaken in Clive quite a bit.” Evidently her woman's intuition had sensed some fault in him that I hadn't been able to spot. However, it was no use worrying about it; Clive was gone, evidently for good, and why he was gone was no matter. The Watsons surprised me very considerably over the business. Evidently everybody that knew Clive and I had been aware that a split was imminent—except myself.
“Clive Owens is not a bad man,” said Mrs. Watson, “But he is weak and shallow.”
“I always found him an awfully decent chap,” I protested.
“Ah, Mark!” returned she, shaking her head.
“He was no true friend of yours. He had fine principles, I've no doubt, that's why you took such a liking to him; but he couldn't live up to them. He hadn't enough moral stamina.”
“I won't have that, Mrs. Watson,” I declared warmly. “I was under no illusions about Clive. I knew he was weak in some things, but he was straight and manly in spite of his faults. I know this, I feel quite sure that Clive would never let a friend down. I don't say that he left me in a very friendly way, but that's only his careless, happy-go-lucky nature. I bet if anyone spoke to him about it, he would feel quite surprised if it was suggested that he left me at all strangely. He's always the same. When he went off to the War, I expect he hardly bothered to say goodbye to his people. It's his nature to be casual in such things.”
“Just what I'm trying to tell you,” said Mrs. Watson, calmly. “He has no stability or depth of character. He's pleasant, amusing, enthusiastic in work and play until he tires of it, but there's nothing lasting or solid about him, Mark.”
I couldn't agree with Mrs. Watson. In spite of Clive's obvious failings, I felt he deserved better than that.
Shortly after this Alice gave me a very unpleasant surprise. It was now approaching near to our wedding day, so my consternation can quite easily be imagined when she calmly informed me one day that she had arranged to leave Stratford, and start work with a new firm in the town of New Plymouth.
“Leave Stratford!” I gasped. “Surely you don't mean that, Alice? Why, our marriage is to take place in another two months.”
“But I do mean it,” replied Alice calmly. “I want the next two months quite free, Mark, and when I get to New Plymouth, you are not to come up and see me more than once a fortnight”
This was a strange decision to hear, a short two months before our wedding! It left me feeling cold and frightened. I stared at her in dismay.
“You needn't look so dumbfounded,” she almost snapped. “I have a perfect right to please myself—yet.”
“But I want you here,” I replied. “I want you here to choose the wallpaper of our house and to consult you about everything. You can't mean it, Alice? Your presence is necessary here for the next two months to help me arrange things.” I felt out of my depth, and helpless and confused.
“I don't care about that kind of thing,” I heard Alice saying. “You can get Auntie Watson to pick things for you, if you can't trust your own taste; she knows the things that I care for.”
I pulled myself together with a violent effort, and faced the situation. If I ever intended to make a stand, this was the place.
“I won't have it, Alice! I want you here, and it's your place to stop here. What's the use of taking another situation for six or seven weeks? Up to the present I've given in to you in everything, but this is different. This isn't playing the game.”
“It is playing the game,” returned Alice defiantly. “I'm not Mrs. Woodford yet, and until I am, I intend to be my own mistress. Time enough for you to act the master when we are married, and anyway,” she added, “It's too late for you to try and alter the arrangement now. I've already given notice here, and I leave for New Plymouth to-morrow, and start in my new place on Tuesday. I have lodgings taken and everything.”
I argued and stormed, but it was useless. Alice showed me that her mind was made up, and if I didn't
My hands were tied to a certain extent by the rooted conviction present in my mind that Alice didn't really love me as a girl should love the man she intended to marry. This knowledge had been my stumbling block all through the piece. I knew, only too well, what was going to happen if I gave her offence. She was quite capable of breaking off the engagement, of handing me back my ring, and the very thought of such a terrible possibility was enough at all times to make me cave in and accept her will.
Alice, I think, regarded me as a sheet anchor. She respected me as a sound, solid sort of a fellow; the homage I tendered her was flattering to her vanity, and as she had never met anyone to call into life her own dormant love, she simply accepted me as being “as good as anyone else.”
It wasn't a very pleasant thought to contemplate, but that's exactly how the land lay, and, while doing my very best all the time to strangle such thoughts, I knew in my heart all along that they were true.
Of course I gave in. I had no option. I might have put my foot down and delivered an ultimatum, I suppose, but what good would that have done? Alice intended to go, with or without permission from me, and a decided stand on my part would only have resulted in a direct break, with its consequent despair and heart-break on my side. And Alice would have parted from me with the settled conviction in her mind that it was all my fault, and that I was an unreasonable, obstinate, bad-tempered man.
As soon as I ceased to protest against her strange decision and reconciled myself to the inevitable, my fiancee became sweet and affectionate again. She was certainly a determined little lady, when her mind was made up. One hint of opposition, and her red lips would set in a firm line, and her soft, dimpled chin
In fact, side-stepping her little bursts of temper, and eating humble pie until I got her pacified again, that's chiefly how I'd managed to gain the position in her affections that I had. She knew very well that few other men would have been as patient and forbearing; a man had to be very much in love to keep up that sort of thing, and of course, realising that must have had some influence on her. Anyone less in love than I was would have been out of the running long before, because no normal, sensible man could have put up with the torture.
That's an admission that I wasn't a normal, sensible man, and as far as concerned Alice, I admit it. I wasn't; I was bewitched, hypnotised. Nothing she could do or say had the slightest effect on my feelings for her. She was Alice, the one and only girl, the queen of them all, and that settled all arguments. Other girls might be silly and shallow, and heartless flirts, but not my Alice.
If the working of my subconscious mind did once or twice fail me, and register a fault against her in my brain, I conscientiously worked out a plausible theory to account for such a strange happening.
When she was treating me most off-hand, I explained her conduct to myself by thinking it was done to test my patience. If she left me out in the cold while she engaged in some outrageous flirtation with someone else, it was done to prove to me that she had accepted me, not because I was the only pebble on the beach, oh no! but because she approved of me at bottom.
A flash of temper I learned to interpret as only a proper spirit for a girl to have, and when she sulked (which I regret to say did happen once or twice) it was because she was hurt and disillusioned, and I
That was Alice at the time she left Stratford for New Plymouth. And as for myself, events all through point to how very much under her little thumb I was. I used to sit of an evening and think of the chivalrous knights of olden times, and wish I could go out and challenge someone to mortal combat in her name. I only had one real opportunity in that way, and poor old Stan Collins was the victim.
Stan and I were very good friends, and he often used to drop in on me and spend an evening yarning and smoking. During these visits Alice's name was seldom mentioned. Stan was aware that I never encouraged any remarks or comments of any description, where she was concerned, and that is why his opening remarks this particular day took me so much by surprise.
It was about two weeks after Alice's departure for New Plymouth. I had adhered to her orders, and had not been up to see her, and she had not written to me. That gave me no uneasiness, however; Alice was a poor correspondent at the best of times.
Stan opened the ball by remarking breezily:
“So it's all off between you and Alice Arnold, Mark? Whew! What a pity you bought all that furniture! I thought you'd sling in your hand, old boy, before you tied her up. What an escape! Allow me to offer you my sincere congratulations.”
He reached for my hand and shook it effusively while I stood there paralysed with surprise.
“By Jove, man! You've had a narrow escape! They tell me she has another mug on a string already.”
* * *
I don't quite know exactly what happened after that, although Stan has informed me since that it was a pretty good “go” while it lasted. When I came to
“A man ought to cut out visiting you, Woodford — you're a bally lunatic!”
He left me to my thoughts, and went away frothing with righteous indignation.
I found food for reflection in what he had said before the interruption. Of course it was utter rot! I was quite sure of that. More of old Tready's underhand back-biting, I expected. Funny, how some people must always be spreading nasty reports about. It was just the same when the girl was at Hawera, they couldn't leave her alone there. I decided to go up to New Plymouth at once, and warn Alice about the lies that were being bandied about.
Country gossips are about the most virulent in the world. Either the life in the country broadens and mellows their outlook on life, or it has the contrary effect, and they run to narrow-mindedness, and mean, spiteful ways. I suppose there is so little outside their work, except their neighbours, that they can find an interest in, that once they start occupying their spare time in picking people to pieces, the fault just grows and grows on them. Certainly quite good-hearted people have this failing, which shows that they don't realise themselves how much the thing has become a habit.
The Watsons and Treadwells were two opposing types. If the Watsons couldn't say anything in favour of a person, they usually said nothing at all, whereas Mr. Treadwell could say something against any person in the district that he'd ever seen—or heard of. It was marvellous where he got his information from. He could relate with gusto scandal about prominent people that had occurred twenty years before. The
But this was a different thing! This was Alice! This had to be enquired into. I would see Alice, and if I found the miserable tales had started with Mr. Treadwell, there was going to be a bitter reckoning for the old gentleman. I'd teach him to try and blacken the character of a helpless, defenceless girl.
Just fancy anyone being so utterly imbecile as to imagine that I had broken off the engagement with a girl like Alice—yet that's what Stan's words seemed to have inferred. What a fool I was; if I'd only kept my temper and pumped the man, I might have got at the bottom of the whole business, and now there wouldn't be a soul for miles around who'd say a word to me about it.
As soon as I had milked my cows that evening I changed my clothes and went along to see the Watsons.
I thought perhaps they might have heard the rumour Stan had got hold of, and it would have been a comfort to me to talk the thing over with someone really
“It might seem as if I doubted her,” I thought, “And am trying to pump them.”
As a matter of fact, although the Watsons were as nice as ever they were, somehow they seemed constrained. Conversation was disjointed, and I could feel that there was something not quite as it ought to be.
I wondered if they had heard of my row with Stan Collins. Perhaps they had heard of it and disapproved. Thinking of that made me silent and uncomfortable.
The Watsons did have something on their minds, I found out afterwards, but it wasn't Stan. Elsie hovered about me the essence of unspoken sympathy. I could always depend on her. She seemed to be saying: “Never mind, Mark, I understand, even if mother and father don't.”
She wasn't thinking anything of the sort, really, it was just my imagination, because none of them had heard about Stan at the time. I tried to brisk up and be jolly and lively, but it was a dismal exhibition, so finally I said: “Well, I'll get away. I shall have a big day to-morrow, because I intend to bike through to New Plymouth between milkings.”
“Eh!” exclaimed old Peter, dropping the pipe out of his mouth on to the floor in his astonishment.
“Have you heard from Alice since she shifted up there?” asked Mrs. Watson.
“No,” said I, “but of course, that's nothing.” I went on apologetically, “Alice never was very good at letter writing.”
“If she doesn't like writing, she could quite easily spare a minute from her work and type one,” put in Elsie. “It wouldn't hurt her. Mark, I think you're a silly, you put up with too much from her. Oh, I know,” she tossed her head defiantly, “I'm talking
I had never heard little Elsie go off like that before. She seemed as bitter as if Alice had done her some personal injury.
“Elsie!” exclaimed her mother, warningly.
“Well, it's not fair!” said Elsie, still in the same bitter tone. “I don't care what you say, mother, Mark should know.”
“That'll do! That'll do!” put in Peter gruffly.
I felt very uncomfortable. I couldn't understand what was happening, but I could feel that there was dynamite in the air somewhere handy. Mrs. Watson stood with her hand up entreatingly, while Peter glared at Elsie and rustled his paper noisily. There didn't seem any need for all this excitement, even if Elsie was giving Alice “once round.”
“Never mind, old lady,” I said soothingly. “I can take a lot of cheek from you, can't I? Even if it is about Alice.”
She wilted into a chair, and Mrs. Watson seemed to give a sigh of relief.
“Here you are, Mark, take this cake home with you when you go,” she said, quite obviously changing the topic of conversation. “It will do for you to nibble at when you are too busy to cook.”
Everything seemed topsy-turvy with the whole family that evening. I couldn't understand what was happening half the time, I suppose because I was unsettled and worried myself, so as soon as I decently could I brought my visit to a close, and footed it back home. Elsie came to the door with me, as I was starting off, and whispered:
“Is it New Plymouth to-morrow, Mark?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Well, put your foot down!” She clasped my arm almost hysterically. “Mind what I'm telling you, Mark. Don't stand any nonsense, but put your foot down at once.”
“Oh!” said I, pushing her away from me coldly. “So you've heard the rotten yarn, have you? Well, just listen to me, Miss, I don't believe it for one second! And you—— “I continued, “I'm disappointed in you, Elsie, after that. Surely you know your own cousin better than to believe such piffle as that about her? Why, I wouldn't believe such rotten tales about anyone—let alone a girl like Alice.”
“Go home! Go home!” returned Elsie. “Remember what I say, Mark—be firm.” She almost slammed the door in my face, and I turned soberly away.
I reflected, as I walked home, on the queer way Elsie and I were getting out of touch with each other. I supposed it was because she was growing up, and I still insisted on treating her as if she were a bit of a flapper. Great, the way she had flared up over nothing. She never used to have fits and starts like that. I dismissed her from my mind and started thinking about Alice.
Next morning I was out of bed before daybreak, and when the sun did rise it found me well under way with the day's work.
Since Clive had left me I had carried on the farm single-handed, partly to economise, in view of my approaching marriage, and partly because I didn't care about trying another man after Clive's peculiar way of leaving. His mysterious manner of leaving had hurt my feelings more than I cared to admit.
Being on my own, I had a heavy day ahead of me, because I had to run my milk down to the factory, wash up the milking machines, cans, etc., on my return, and do a lot of other necessary work before I could start off.
By 11 o'clock I had finished everything, and was free to depart. I wheeled my shaky old motor-bike out of the shed on to the road, and commenced the journey.
A glass of milk, and a slice of bread and butter had been all I had had, since daybreak, but I promised
On my way I had to pass the post office in the village, and I deliberated as to whether I should stop and call for my letters, but decided against it as a waste of time. I have often wondered since if it would have made any difference had I done so, but I hardly think it would, as matters turned out.
I rattled and bumped along the main road at the best speed the bike was capable of, and arrived at New Plymouth at about half-past twelve. I had the address of the office where Alice was working, and hurried there at once, without waiting to eat first.
She had gone out to lunch, I found on enquiry, and I was forced to kick my heels on the pavement for half an hour before she came back.
At length I saw her hurrying along the street. As soon as she saw me standing there, waiting, she went as white as a sheet.
I noticed that most particularly, because Alice's face usually registered emotion by flushes of colour.
“What's up, ladybird?” I said, with a laugh. “One would almost think, to look at you, that you were scared of me.”
The colour came back slowly into her face, and she looked at me strangely. Not a word of welcome, not a smile! I knew there was something amiss, but I never dreamt it was going to be as bad as it turned out.
“Didn't you get my letter?” she asked, in a thin, trembly voice.
“Letter! What letter? I've been expecting a letter every day for the last fortnight,” I replied reproachfully.
Her relief was so obvious that it impressed me. Usually a most unobservant chap, my wits were sharp enough at this particular interview, because something was telling me all the time that things were not what they ought to be.
“I want a few minutes conversation with you before you go into work,” I said. “It's important.”
She looked up sharply, with a flash, almost of fear, I couldn't help thinking. Silly girl! Why should she fear me?
“Hurry up,” she said, “I can only give you a few minutes. They are very particular about punctuality at this office.”
I wasted no words on preliminaries, after hearing that, but got right on to the subject that was worrying me, and asked her what she thought of it.
“According to a yarn Stan Collins has got hold of,” I said, “our engagement is broken off, and you are going with some other man.”
She laughed: “Perhaps it's true! Perhaps I am!” She looked at me with a funny, inquiring tilt of her head.
“Don't be silly!” I grunted. “What had I better do about it? Let it drop, or hunt up the originator and make the cur eat his dirty lies.”
“Suppose you find out that some woman is the originator?” replied Alice provokingly.
“Don't joke about it, Alice,” I implored her. “Can't you see how serious the thing is? Our marriage is to be in another few weeks, and we don't want that sort of tale about.”
“Oh, serious? Then you believe it?”
I almost swore. Was there ever such a tantalising little thing in all the world! I stamped on the pavement in my impatience, and Alice said:
“Go on, lose your temper. That's the way to find out all you want to know from a poor girl. But I'm afraid I can't stop to be further impressed. I must get in to my work.”
She darted for the door of the office, then turned on the step and eyed me seriously, almost pityingly, it seemed to me.
“Good-bye, Mark. Go home and call for your mail, and my letter will explain all you want to know. Don't be angry with me, will you? I can't help it.”
With that she waved her hand at me and disappeared from view. It was a most unsatisfactory parting. I hadn't got the slightest satisfaction out of the interview, and all I had to keep up my sinking spirits, on the way home, was the thought of her letter. She promised that would explain everything.
I made a hasty meal before I set off for home, bought a big box of fancy chocolates, and posted them to Alice's address as a surprise, and then away I went.
I called and got the letter as I passed the post office in our township, but I was late, so postponed reading it until I reached home. On arrival I put off reading the letter again until after I had milked the herd and finished up the day's work. I thought it would be nice to reserve it as a treat for after tea, when I could take my time and linger over it in comfort. About half-past seven, I suppose, I got inside again, and then lit the fire and laid the table for my evening meal. All through the meal I gloated on the unopened letter, turning it over and speculating on its contents. No! I wouldn't open it until I had washed the dishes and was comfortable for the evening.
At last I had everything finished up to my satisfaction. The table was cleared, the food put away in the cupboard, and a fresh log of wood blazing in the grate. Now for Alice's letter! I took it up tenderly, and slit open the envelope.
She said her letter would explain everything. It did. It explained everything with a vengeance. She hadn't made any mistake about that:—
Dear Mark,
I am sorry I am going to hurt you, but you will soon forget me. This is to say that I have found out that I cannot love you, and it is better for us to
* * *
When little things happen to upset us, we ramp and rave, and kick things about, but when the big troubles come along we don't do that. It might be a relief if we could. We just slump down under the weight of our misery and remain silent.
I stared at Alice's letter. I think I laughed. What a joke! Then I turned it over carefully, and looked for the postscript that would explain it. Nothing!
Slowly I went through it again. “Dear Mark, I am sorry I am going to hurt you, but you will soon forget me——” What a funny thing for Alice to say! She must know me better than that! But of course it wasn't written seriously. And Clive! My
Then I hunted about the floor, putting my little lamp down on a chair, so as to show more light. Evidently the note had fluttered away unnoticed. I wouldn't, I couldn't, believe the truth.
After a while I stopped hunting, and sat down to consider. Clive Owens engaged to Alice. Ever since the picnic. Stray sentences from out the letter chased themselves confusedly through my brain. It was quite impossible for me to think clearly, but I didn't feel hurt or despairing, that was to come later. I simply refused to believe the thing; I couldn't realise it; it had me stunned.
After a while I went to bed and slept like a top. In the morning I got up as usual and went about the work of milking the cows in a dazed, stupid walking dream. I did all the work, carefully, conscientiously, although I didn't know I was doing it at the time. I couldn't seem to think properly, most of the time, but just had odd flashes of thought, between spells of dull ache. I knew something terrible had happened to me, but my mind was too apathetic to try and recall what it was. But the occasional intervals of connected, lucid thought, were agony unspeakable.
My mind kept returning to the events of that bush picnic. Clive and Alice had had an understanding ever since then. I recalled her words, that “Perhaps I was mistaken in Clive.” When I had chided her, and said I thought she liked him, she had replied: “And so I do like him.” Oh, what a fool I'd been! What a blind, mad fool! She couldn't have been so hopelessly in love with him at that time, or she would never have told me that. She had tried to warn me, and I had been too blind and thickheaded to understand.
Why, everybody in the district must have seen the way things were going—all except me. So that was why Clive was so restless and discontented! That was why he was in such an anxious flurry to get away! No wonder!
I strolled restlessly into my front rooms. They were full of our furniture, Alice's and mine. No, not Alice's any more, mine alone. I wondered what I should do with it all. Ah! I knew. Axe!
I started off to the wood heap to get the axe, but stopped before I got there. What was the use? Smashing up the furniture wouldn't bring Alice back to me.
In the afternoon I took the big knife that I used for skinning dead cows and calves, and set to work grinding it on the grindstone. I don't think I had any connected idea, when I started, of what I intended it for; I just started grinding it down.
Then suddenly the idea came. It was just the sort of knife that would look well buried up to the hilt in Clive Owen's body. Now I knew what I wanted it for. But before I could do that, it would have to have a sharp point on it.
I worked away at the knife, grinding the back to an edge as well as bringing it to a point, and while I worked I matured my plans. He would never betray another friend after I had done with him.
About half-past two old Peter Watson came stumping along the concrete path towards me, and I carefully hid my knife under a sack and went towards him. I invited him into the house, and we sat talking for a while. Mrs. Watson was anxious to hear how I was taking the blow, and had sent Peter along to find out.
“Got back all right?” said Peter, his question referring to my New Plymouth trip.
“Yes, made good time, too,” I replied cheerfully.
“See Alice?” he grunted.
“Yes.”
He shuffled his feet uncomfortably, and eyed me in a puzzled way.
“Damn queer things, wimmen,” he volunteered at length. “You never know what they're going to do next.”
“I think you're about right there, Mr. Watson,” I replied, with a laugh. “They take understanding.”
Peter dropped the subject, and we talked about the Home market, the price of butter fat, politics, anything that came up, but I could see that he was uneasy. He went home at last, and told Mrs. Watson and Elsie that I was taking it as cool as a cucumber, and that he was blest if he didn't think that I was relieved about it.
Elsie told me afterwards that Alice had written to them telling of her intention to break the engagement. That accounted for their strange manner on my last visit—they knew, and I didn't, and they hadn't the heart to break the news to me.
“It would only have meant,” Mrs. Watson explained to me, “that you would have left our place in anger, and perhaps have said things that you would have been sorry about afterwards. We couldn't tell you, Mark, it was too terrible. And you wouldn't have believed us, would you?”
No, I certainly never should have believed them, so it was quite right of them not to tell me.
As soon as Peter had gone I set to work on the knife again, and kept at it until cow time. There was no mistake about it now. I knew what I wanted it for. It was for Owens. Owens, the false friend! The man who had stolen my Alice's heart away from me.
Next morning I finished the edge of my dagger, for such it had become under my hands, and got out my oilstone to give it the final polish up. I still refused to
I began to lay my plans. As coolly and quietly as if I were making arrangements for a day off, I went down to interview Arty Wilcox. I was going away to find Clive, but I had to get a man to run my farm in my absence, before I could go. I remember thinking that it would be cruel to leave the cows with no one to milk them.
Arty lived at home with his people, but used to make his pocket money by working about the district at odd jobs. I knew he would be glad to come because work was scarce at the time.
“I've had a wire, Arty,” I lied to him, “and am called away on very important business. What about running my farm for me until I come back?”
“Good enough!” said Arty. “I'm clean out of work of any sort. How long will it be for?”
“I don't know when I shall be back,” I replied.
“Stop until you see or hear further.”
“Which way are you heading, Mark?” enquired Arty curiously.
Everyone knew that Alice had jilted me, by this time. Perhaps he thought I was going through to see her. I must stop that.
“I'm going through to Palmerston North,” I replied. “It's very important.”
I made all the necessary arrangements for leaving the place in order, even down to filling in a cheque and leaving it on the table for Arty to find, then gave the bike a thorough overhaul preparatory to commencing the journey.
On recalling that dreadful time I can see now that I must have been mad—quite mad, and it's a marvel to me that none of my friends noticed it. I had calmly resolved to murder Clive, but on the last day I spent at home, before setting forth in search of him, I changed my plans.
I was sitting in the kitchen eyeing the patent hot water service affair I had installed as a surprise for Alice, when it struck me suddenly that I was going to do a very foolish thing. I was going to kill Clive—but why kill him? It wasn't his fault. He was just like me; it was only natural that he should fall in love with Alice. He couldn't help that. It wasn't Clive's fault. Whose fault was it, then? I had it! Alice's, of course. I would leave poor old Clive alone, and I would bury my knife in the false heart of that girl. Now I knew what I was going to do. I didn't worry myself about what was going to happen after that—I had an idea somehow that the death of Alice would be the end of the world. There was method in my madness, just the same, or I would never have thought of my cows.
That evening I dressed carefully, removing everything from my pockets, and then taking Alice's letter I wrapped it firmly about the blade of the knife. I was going to confront her with the letter first.
I placed the knife carefully in my breast pocket, with the handle down, then carefully buttoned up my coat. I was ready to start.
It was dusk when I left the farm, and I went along easily for some miles. There was no hurry. I would be there long before she retired for the night, and I would knock at the door and ask for an interview.
The night proved dark and wild. “Just the night for my job,” I thought, with a grim satisfaction. I flew steadily along, leaving the miles behind me. My front light was out of order, and throwing but a dim light ahead, but it gave me no concern. I seemed to be just sitting there, eating up the distance, without any effort on my part at all. I wasn't actually conscious of steering, although I suppose I must have been directing the bike for all that or I could never have sailed along as I did.
At last I came to a long, winding, down grade, with a bridge at the bottom. A motor car, fitted with dazzling spot lights, was crossing the bridge. These lights recalled me to myself. They were fixed unwinkingly on me, as the car approached, and were so confusing in their intensity that I found a difficulty in keeping the road.
The closer we approached the more blinding became the glare, and at length I had to give up all attempts at seeing beneath the wheel, and steered to the left to escape collision. As I ran out of the radius of light, on passing, the darkness closed in like a black mantle, and I shook my head and winked hard two or three times. Just as I did this my bike ran into an obstacle on the side of the road and we came to grief.
I can remember every small detail of that spill. I flew through space, to land on my head with a sickening thud. The blow was enough to fell an ox, but it didn't knock me right out, all the same. I could feel a bump starting to grow on my head almost as soon as it happened, and I remember thinking: “Some cropper, this!”
I knew I was bound for New Plymouth; I knew it was a matter of importance; so I tried to get to my feet. The first move sent a pain through my chest like the poke of a red hot needle. My left leg was tangled up in the machine, and I could feel that it was broken. I felt myself going into a drowsy stupor.
I made another ineffectual attempt to get to my feet. “Nice mess!” I thought. “Well, I'll have a little sleep—and then I'll be all right. Just five minutes, then I'll be ready again.”
I snuggled down into the gravelly road, as luxuriously as if it were a feather bed, and quietly went to sleep.
* * *
When I returned to consciousness again the first thing to greet my eye was a big spoon full of some white pap, hovering about in front of my face.
I was sitting propped up in a snow-white bed, and I could feel an arm about my neck and a hand under my chin.
A white sleeved arm was reaching over my shoulder and holding the spoon. I opened my mouth with surprise, and before I could say anything in popped the spoon and almost choked me.
“Here! Here! What's the game?” I demanded, as soon as I could get my breath for spluttering.
“Hullo! How are you?” said a pleasant voice that I had never heard before. The owner of the voice removed the food, and walked around to where I could see her.
“A nurse!” I ejaculated.
“Quite right!” she smiled. “I'm so pleased to see you back again.”
“Why, where have I been?” I asked. “What's happened, anyhow?”
“I'll tell you all about it to-morrow; now, you must rest and be still,” nurse replied.
I'd had experience of nurses before, when I was at the War, and I knew enough about them to know that when they use a certain tone there's only one thing to be done and that's obey. I did as I was ordered, and lay back in the bed thinking.
One of my hands lay outside the counterpane, and I eyed it idly.
“Mighty queer thing, that!” I remarked to myself. “I never noticed before that I had such a girliegirlie hand as all that.” It was white and soft looking, with the veins all showing through.
“Never noticed that before——” I muttered, in bewilderment.
This was a hospital, that was a nurse. A suspicion that it wasn't my hand—that the hospital staff had carelessly left an odd hand lying about, took possession of me. I became alarmed.
“Too bad! Someone ought to be told about it!”
I moved the fingers in my own hand, and was relieved to see the fingers before me move in sympathy. It was my hand, after all.
After solving the mystery of the hand I felt better. I began to take stock of things about me. My left leg was in splints, or plaster of paris, my right arm bandaged up, and a swathe of bandages went across my right shoulder and around my chest. Slowly everything came back to me.
“This is the result of last night's silly foolishness,” I thought. “If I hadn't fallen off, God only knows what would have happened!” I felt no bitterness or heartache, only an immense relief that Providence had intervened and stopped me in my dreadful intention.
Calmly I reviewed the events of the past. Clive—Alice. What a miserable waster I had been! Of course the girl couldn't marry me, when she loved someone else; it would have been a crime. She was right, and I was wrong. Poor little Alice, she always was right; it was always my fault. I should have known that such a girl could never be for me.
While I was musing the matron of the hospital came in to see me.
“Are you all right now, do you think?” she asked.
“Right as a pie,” I replied, “When can I get up?”
She laughed: “That's what we like to hear,” said she. “You havn't always been all right, though, have you?”
“Why?” I asked.
“You've been very ill,” she went on gently. “You've had brain fever.”
“Crumbs!” I ejaculated, in dismay. “Then how long have I been here?”
The matron told me all about it. I had been found lying at the side of the road, in a pool of blood, my broken leg still tangled up in the bike, almost a month before.
A piece of rata firewood that had probably fallen off a load some wood-carter was taking in to town to sell, had been the cause of my misfortune. On my arrival at the hospital examination had proved that my left leg was badly broken and my right forearm.
But what had surprised the doctor and matron most of all, when they set to work to patch me up, was the fact that buried in the muscles of my chest, was a very passable imitation of a stiletto.
Only for the fact that it had glanced upwards, and struck on the collarbone, I might never have lived to know of it.
“There was a letter crumpled up about the hilt of the weapon,” said the matron, eyeing me steadily, “and we were forced to read what we could of it because we could find no other papers on you to serve for identification purposes; we had to try and locate your relatives or friends, of course.”
“Then you know all about it?” said I, with a feeble attempt at levity.
“I think so,” replied the matron gravely. “You see, you were wandering at times, as well.”
“Oh, was I?” I exclaimed in dismay. “What did I say?”
“You said a good deal more than you would like to hear repeated again,” the matron informed me. “Do you still feel like that, do you think?”
I saw at once that I had given the whole show away while I was delirious, and that it had the matron worried.
“Don't feel anxious,” I reassured her. “I can thank God for all this mangling. It's a direct judgment on me, matron, and I'd sooner be torn into little pieces than carry on with the idea I started off with that day. I'm a lucky man to be here at all, and I appreciate every wound and broken bone to the full. They've saved me from making a pretty average mess of things.”
“That's a good boy,” she smiled. “Now we'll just keep it to ourselves. I have destroyed the letter—it was all stained with blood, and I shall keep your knife for my private collection of curios. Will that be all right?”
“That'll do me,” I acquiesced. “I assure you I never want to see it again.”
On reading Alice's letter the only information the matron could get out of it was Alice's address, and the fact that my Christian name was Mark. She wrote to Alice at once, and Alice had wired through to Mrs. Watson and put her in touch with the hospital.
“Miss Arnold rings up to enquire about you every morning,” volunteered the matron. “She seems very distressed.”
I grunted: “Tell her she needn't bother any more; that I am quite all right,” said I.
“Oh, but is that necessary?” she enquired. I think the matron would have liked to see a reconciliation effected; but I knew that was out of the question.
“It's only sympathy,” I told her. “She's engaged to another man, and I don't want her sympathy. Sympathy from her would be the last straw.”
As soon as my neighbours knew that I was over the brain fever and getting right again, they all came
“You know, Mark,” volunteered old Tready, sitting on the side of my bed while he spoke. “I picked what would happen. I knew she'd do that. I knew she was that sort ever since our Bob turned her down.”
I let the old chap ramble on unheeded. What was the use of hurting his feelings by telling him that I didn't like to hear that sort of talk about Alice. He meant it well and thought he was being sympathetic and entertaining.
I smiled to myself as I thought of how his eyes would pop out of his head, and how his tongue would wag, if he only knew the truth. That was a secret between the matron, the nurse, and myself.
Elsie and Mrs. Watson came together. Elsie gave a distressed gasp, as soon as she saw me.
“Don't look so awfully tragic,” said I, “It's mostly bandages you see.”
“Mark, I'm so sorry!” she said.
I knew what she was referring to; it wasn't so much my smashed-up condition. None of the others could see beyond my bandages, but trust little Elsie to put her finger on the real hurt. It was the wreck of all my hopes, the ghastly disillusionment, that Elsie felt sorry for. What are a few broken bones and wounds, compared to the toppling down of a man's dearest ideals?
Although by this time I could look back on the past without bitterness, yet I was still far from being normal and contented. I felt afraid of the future. It loomed ahead, ugly and threatening, and sometimes I doubted my ability to carry on; it seemed too lonely and meaningless; just a dreary blank, from year to year. I was afraid of it, but I knew it had to be faced.
During all this time I heard nothing about Alice or Clive. The Watsons carefully refrained from mentioning either of them. One thing I did ponder on. Every sentence in Alice's letter of dismissal was burnt into my brain as though by a red hot iron. I could have pictured that sheet of paper in my mind's eye, and then read it backward from memory. It was the comments regarding Elsie that I pondered on so much. All through my spell of convalescence these words kept crossing my mind:
“You could marry Elsie if you wished to, I am sure she cares for you.”
I didn't think so, not for a minute, and further, I hoped most earnestly that Alice was mistaken. What a pity if she did. Poor little kid!
No, Elsie regarded me just as I did her. We were firm, platonic friends. I wasn't in love with her, that was certain, all my love had been given to Alice. And although Alice had spurned the gift, that made no difference, I still loved her as much as ever. I knew that, and never attempted to disguise it from myself, although of course I never mentioned her name to anyone else. I wouldn't even admit to myself that I had been ill-treated, or that Alice had behaved harshly to me. She had to do what she had done, in the manner she had done it, because no other method would have got rid of me. I was like the man that couldn't take a hint, I had to be slung out neck and crop, and it was all my own fault, from start to finish.
Mrs. Watson gave me all the news of the place, when she made her visit. Arty was still running my farm for me, and everything was in good order. The cows were being dried off for the winter, and he was occupying his spare time doing up fences and cleaning out drains.
Stan Collins was coming to see me on the following week.
“He told us all about you,” she laughed, shaking a finger at me.
I flushed and looked foolish.
“You needn't look so sheepish and ashamed,” Mrs. Watson continued. “Stan admits on reflection, that it was the only course you could have adopted. He says he only got what he deserved, for being so tactless and thoughtless.”
I thought a lot of old Stan, after that. It isn't everyone that would admit as much, under the circumstances, and, anyway, was he so much to blame? He didn't know I was in ignorance of his news when he blurted it out. Really, when I look back on the business, it seems to me that Stan had called that day to offer me sympathy. It was certainly a bit tactless of him, however, to congratulate a man on being jilted just a few weeks before the wedding.
When the Watsons said good-bye, Elsie took my hand and whispered:
“Don't be downhearted, old boy, will you?”
“Not if I can dodge it, old lady,” I assured her.
I remembered Alice's letter, and gazed earnestly into her eyes. They were humid with unshed tears, and her lip was quivering.
“Don't be a fool, Els,” I said gruffly. “I'll be up and about, as well as ever again, in another week or two. And anyhow, this has been a jolly good holiday; I'm enjoying it.”
“I know! I know!” she said. “Good-bye, Mark.”
After they were gone I lay in silence and went over events. I was lucky indeed to have friends like
I had got into the habit of thinking of Mr. Treadwell as a man without a redeeming virtue, and yet the very first time I found myself sick and in trouble, he had sunk all his animosity and offered me genuine sympathy and friendship.
Sick bed reflection is good for the soul, in more ways than one. It gives a man a chance to think properly; he has plenty of time for the operation, whereas in active life he is rushing about too busy to meditate on anything.
I knew all the faults of my neighbours; it was left for me to be in trouble and sickness before I had time to notice their good qualities.
When Stan Collins came to see me, we had a good laugh together. He entered the ward with a huge grin.
“I've come to clean you up,” he stated, “and get a bit of my own back.”
I chuckled: “Sorry, old chap,” said I, “It's jolly decent of you to come near me, after the rotten way I behaved.”
“Pooh! My fault, Mark. My fault entirely. It was one of those cases of a fool rushing in where angels fear to tread. I got what I was asking for, anyhow.” He sniggered afresh, at the recollection, then continued: “Matter of fact, Mark, I ought to have known better. 'Tisn't as if I didn't know how you'd be feeling at the time, either, because much the same sort of turnout occurred to me once. I went half crazy for a week or two. A fellow soon gets over it though, that's one consolation.”
I smiled grimly to myself. If Stan could get over his love affair as easily as his words implied, he was making a big mistake if he thought it was the same kind of experience as I had just been through. I
It's one thing to wear your heart on your sleeve when courting a girl; it's quite a different thing to wear it there after she has definitely rejected you.
In the first instance it's due to the girl to show her and the world what you think of her. In the second case your conduct only incites an amused pity from the onlookers, and in all probability annoys and irritates the girl. I suppose she feels she is in a measure responsible for your ridiculous behaviour, and she wishes you wouldn't.
While I was slowly progressing towards recovery, expenses were steadily creeping up. Apart from the hospital and doctor's bill, I was paying Arty Wilcox £2 10s. a week for running my farm for me. It was a severe drain on my finances, but that didn't worry me, because as the marriage was a wash-out, there was no further need for me to be thrifty.
The time passed quickly enough, and a few weeks after my recovery from the brain fever saw me hobbling about on crutches. The arm, and the wound in the chest, were not much trouble, but my broken leg was a different proposition, and kept me there for a fair time.
At length, however, I was passed as fit to leave for my home. I viewed the move with considerable dread. At the hospital I had company all the time; at home I was going to be all alone.
It was arranged that a taxi cab should call for me as that would be more comfortable for me than riding in a gig, and when the day for my departure arrived
I could hardly realise that I was actually going back to the farm again. It seemed to me that aeons of time had elapsed, since last I had seen it. All my life, before the period spent in hospital, seemed to be a kind of indistinct dream. Sometimes I almost wondered if it had really happened. Then I would think of Alice. It had happened all right.
What a difference now, I thought, to the day when I had first arrived on the place. What a comparison! Then, I had been a carefree, light-hearted, happy young fellow, brim full of ambition and go. Now, I reflected, what was I? Crippled up, disheartened, disillusioned; I felt old—old and hopeless.
The taxi drew up at my front gate, and I climbed out and hobbled off with the aid of my crutch.
I entered the front garden. Everything about the place looked different in my eyes. Dreary and squalid; no wonder the girl had baulked at coming to live at such a show as this! Strange, how different it had all appeared, when Alice and I were engaged. Then, it had not looked dreary and squalid.
“Well, well! Buck up, old chap, and face the music,” I said to myself, and felt my way along the garden path to the house.
So I had arrived home. Home! I entered the kitchen. A fire was blazing in the grate, and the kettle was singing on the hob. Some of the furniture I had bought had been unpacked from the crates and arranged about the room. The small table was covered with a white cloth and a place laid. A plate of scones
I went outside and looked around, but nobody was in sight. Inside again, I took stock afresh. There was a small parcel on the sideboard and a note. I opened the note, and read:
Dear Mark,
Welcome home. We thought you would like to be alone, so did not stop. The parcel is some of your mail. We did not send it to the hospital with your other letters, although it has been here months. Come to see us at once. Watson.
I turned the parcel over idly. It was an effort to feel enough interest in it to do even that. Then, I gave a sudden start. The address was in Alice's writing, and I tore at the string with nervous trembling fingers, and tipped out the contents.
Brooches, a small wristlet watch, and a ring. How the sight of them revived old memories! I had never thought of Alice's trinkets from the day on which I had received her letter, until they rolled on to the table as I emptied the box containing them.
It seemed a needless turning of the knife in the wound, and I groaned.
“I wish to heaven she'd kept them,” I thought.
Seeing those trinkets so unexpectedly was one of the worst minutes of the whole lot. Finally I pulled myself together, swept up the things, and stowed them away in the bottom of my trunk.
I made a tour of inspection all over the house. Rolls of new wallpaper stood about in each room, just as I had left them months before.
The furniture Alice and her aunt had bought for me littered the place up—with the exception of the few things in the kitchen that were unpacked—still in the boxes provided by the furniture dealers. What a home coming!
I set my teeth, locked all the doors of the rooms containing furniture, so that I should not be tempted to keep going in and out, and prepared to face the music.
The fresh milking season had commenced, and presently Arty arrived to prepare things for milking. I put on my working clothes and made a start. Work was to be the reason of my existence for the future.
From that day on I buried myself in work. At first I had to hobble about, but my leg gradually got better, and before a month was over, I was, to all casual observers, the same Mark Woodford they had always known.
There was one vital difference, however. I refused to go out anywhere. Instead, I would sit, evening after evening, staring stupidly at the fire until bedtime. No fine castles in the air, as in the first year of farming, no dreams of success and untold wealth. Just staring at nothing. Then one day I conceived the idea of writing the history of my courtship of Alice, thinking it would enable me to analyse my state of mind, and determine where I had gone wrong. If it did me no other good, it would serve to pass away the long evenings. I bought some writing pads and made a start.
Although I preferred to stay at home, I found I was not to have all my own way in this respect. Every little while Peter Watson would put in an appearance at my house, and say:
“Time you paid us a visit, old man.” There was no taking “no” for an answer, with Peter. He always came along after milking, and would sit in the house until I had washed, shaved and dressed myself, and then escort me to his home in person.
“You must get about and keep in touch with people,” Mrs. Watson would tell me, almost impatiently. “Goodness! If I didn't send Peter along for you, you'd never come near us.”
I had dispensed with Arty's help on the farm shortly after my return, preferring to handle the work by myself, so I usually made stress of work my excuse. But it wasn't stress of work, and Mrs. Watson had intuition enough to see it. It was simply a languid indifference to exert myself in any way other than my farm work. I was so lacking in interest in the things about me that I didn't care a scrap if I didn't speak to a human being from one week's end to another. In fact I preferred not to. When I did get to the Watsons I always managed to enjoy myself in a quiet, peaceful way, but that didn't spur me on to make an effort and go there oftener.
By this time my farm was in good running order, and I enjoyed the name of being a success, and a coming man in the district. People would point me out as a successful farmer, a long-headed man, a man who farmed scientifically. Older men listened to my opinions with deference, and were not above asking me for advice.
I derived no satisfaction from it. A short year before and I should have felt proud and flattered, but now it was all Dead Sea fruit to me; my only comfort lay in hard, long hours of toil and dreamless sleep. I kept my own counsel, for all that, and turned a placid, if not a smiling face, towards the world. I might be taking my love affair hard, but I was determined that none of my neighbours should see the fact.
Sometimes, especially after a visit to the Watsons, I would think of Alice's letter, and wonder how near the truth she had been, in suggesting that I might marry Elsie. I refused to consider the proposition under any circumstances, because, although no doubt, Elsie and I could hit it very well together, I was not in love with the girl. I could only offer affection and respectful devotion, and I still clung to my old fashioned theory that only love made marriage possible.
The days dragged on, each one helping to lighten the load for me, and by the arrival of summer I had settled down to—if not forgetfulness—a fatalistic acceptance of things as they were. I began to see more of Elsie, and in a quiet way endeavoured to find out what she actually did think of me, but I got little help from that.
If Elsie had more than a friendly regard for me, she was taking all sorts of fine care that I didn't find it out until I had placed my own cards on the table.
People began to notice a difference in me—that I was livening up and beginning to take an interest in things and visit about again, and some of the ladies even commenced to chaff me about my empty house—full of furniture. I listened to their sallies in silence, and refused to be drawn into an expression of any sort, on the subject. It was still a sore one, with me, but I had no intention of letting them see that.
One lady, who thought she knew all about me, even went to the length of informing me that I hadn't really been upset, when Alice and I had parted.
“Now tell the truth, Mr. Woodford,” she said smilingly. “It was only hurt pride with you, wasn't it?”
“Pay your money and take your choice,” replied I, and she delightedly accepted that as confirmation of her opinion.
I was getting over it, nevertheless, or getting used to it, and I used to sit of an evening and wonder to myself how I had ever let a girl get me down to the extent that Alice had.
“Never again!” I used to think. “There isn't a girl alive worth a man's peace of mind for a single minute.” And I would fill my pipe, stoke up the fire, and sit there smoking and thinking, or else add a few more words to the story of the experience.
One day Mrs. Watson took it into her head to give me some motherly advice.
“Why don't you bustle about, Mark, and hunt up some nice girl to be friends with. You haven't given in, have you?”
I looked at her with a slight smile, and made answer:
“Good idea! But don't growl if I take your advice and hang my hat up to Miss Elsie.”
“Elsie will please herself, my dear man,” answered Mrs. Watson. “Her affairs of the heart are nothing to do with me.”
“Not even if she accepted me?” I jested.
Mrs. Watson's face grew serious.
“Of course we should welcome you, if such a thing should happen,” she replied.
No help there. Mrs. Watson wasn't giving any information away. If I wanted Elsie I had to set to work in the usual way, and court her, and take my chance of winning or losing, like any other lover. I had been through that part of the business before, when I had courted Alice, and this time I felt I would like something definite to go on before starting. If I could only get a hint as to the state of the lady's affections, it would make things easier. In spite of Alice's hint, I didn't really think that Elsie cared for me, and that was really the only thing that made me consider the question at all.
I was in a quandary. I deliberated over the position, and determined that if I could get sufficient evidence to satisfy myself that Elsie loved me, then, and not till then, would I propose.
I argued to myself that we were so much in accord, in our manners and thoughts, that we were bound to be happy together. I would tell Elsie honestly that I didn't feel the same unreasoning, passionate love for her as I had felt for Alice, but in spite of that I had always felt in my inmost mind that she was the nicest girl I knew. She had always appealed to my common sense; Alice had appealed to my heart.
Comparing the two girls, as I was able to do, by this time, I marvelled at my infatuation for Alice. Elsie was just as good looking, taking her face feature by feature, and certainly to me she had always been sweeter and nicer dispositioned, than her cousin had.
Added to that I could feel comfortable and at ease in her presence, whereas Alice had always given me the feeling that she was looking for something in me that wasn't there, and being disappointed about it.
To marry Elsie, however, I would have to sink all my old principles and ideals, and start afresh with a new stock of modern ideas about marriage. I would have to admit that marriage was a matter to be arranged by the brain, and not by the heart, as I had always believed. The simple belief that I had carried around with me for so long, that every soul has a kindred soul waiting for it somewhere in this world, and that when Providence is ready they will meet, if they only have faith and play the game in the meantime—that belief would have to go by the board. Perhaps it was really so; perhaps marriage was like almost everything else, a matter of business. I hated to believe it, just the same.
I nerved myself to sound Elsie, and see what she thought of the question. I put the matter before her as fairly as I could.
“Look here, Elsie,” I commenced, “I've got a problem in human hearts and passions that I want to hear the answer on.”
“Tell me,” said Elsie, “I've made a study of that kind of problem.”
“Very well,” I continued. “If a man respected a girl very highly, as a matter of fact, knew there was no one quite like her or as nice as her, would he be justified in proposing marriage, if he didn't actually love the girl?”
While I was speaking, Elsie had glanced up once, quickly, from the sewing she was doing, and had then dropped her eyes again to her work. Before I was
Not disquieting, but sympathetic and understanding. I knew that Elsie was giving all her mind to the answer, and it allowed me time to compose my thoughts also.
Presently she answered slowly, still without looking at me:
“I think I understand, Mark. It wouldn't do. You see, it isn't fair to the girl; she expects love, first of all. It might happen if she accepted the offer of marriage that the man would learn to love her, but then again, what a tragedy if instead of that he fell in love with someone else.”
We were silent again for a long time, after she had concluded speaking.
Then I said: “I don't think that would happen, old lady.”
“I advise the man to wait a year,” Elsie went on, in a quiet, steady voice, “and perhaps things will be all different by then.”
“Right oh!” said I. Then, with an attempt at jocularity: “I'll tell the poor gentleman what the lady seer says.”
That settled the question for a time, at any rate, and I think that if anything, I was relieved. I would never have thought of marrying Elsie had it not been for the clause in Alice's letter, and now it struck me that perhaps Alice was wrong.
“I'm glad I've settled that,” I thought. “In a year's time someone else might come along and win Elsie's whole heart, and if that does happen no one will be sincerer in their good wishes than myself. And if it doesn't happen, and Elsie seems to like me, I'll try again, and we'll make a match of it and laugh at love.”
On New Year's Eve I went into town. I had no particular reason, except that all the country folk liked to drift into the town on that day. Sometimes
In town I was strolling slowly up the street, taking notice of the crowds of womenfolk, and thinking of nothing in particular, when suddenly I rounded a chattering group on the pavement, to find myself face to face with Clive Owens.
The shock of recognition was mutual. Clive shrunk back, and I could see that if possible he intended to avoid me, so I put out my hand heartily, and said: “Hullo, Clive! How are you?”
We shook hands and I led him off the pavement on to the road, so that we could talk without being pushed and shoved about by the thronging pedestrians.
“How's everything?” I enquired. “I've often wondered how you were getting on. Why didn't you write?”
Long ago I had forgiven Clive for his share in my disastrous love affair. It was simply “fate,” and Clive could no more have helped himself than I could.
That's how I argued it out to myself, anyhow. I was mistaken I think, just the same. I based my reasoning on the supposition that Clive had fallen as hopelessly in love with the girl as I had myself, and that excused his conduct. A man in that frame of mind, I thought, especially a weak man, such as I knew Clive to be, was simply not responsible for his actions. He might have been more open, of course, but I had myself to blame for that, as much as anything. Alice and he were both aware that I was inclined to be hasty, and possibly they had acted as they had done to avoid a scene.
Clive was fidgety and uneasy, during our conversation, but my friendly and easy attitude towards him, soon thawed out his reserve.
“Yes,” he said, “I've wandered about since I left you, Mark. I'm out at Whangamomona at present, bush whacking. Terrible country. Almost standing
“I suppose you have a fair swag of wealth saved up by now,” I suggested.
Clive laughed. “Me?” said he. “Not a solitary stiver! If I'd stuck to you, Mark, I should be worth something by now, but a fellow never knows when he's well off. Leaving you was my downfall. I've never been able to save a cent since I cut out the roll I made while with you.”
“Oh! You spent that?” said I. I felt puzzled. If the man was engaged to be married, that seemed a mighty queer method of preparing for the happy day. I decided to ask him straight out.
“So you have no savings, Clive? How does Alice take that?”
“Alice!” he snorted. “I haven't seen Alice for months and months, and what's more——” savagely, “I don't want to see her, either. You had a lucky let off there, Mark. She'd have got you, if she hadn't fixed her eye on me.”
Umn-n! I felt like knocking him down, but saw that he meant no offence, so kept quiet. It was news, anyhow, and I didn't intend to let him go until I'd heard more.
“What happened, Clive? Tell us all about it?” I said, in as casual a manner as I could.
“Well,” commenced Clive, “When she went up to New Plymouth that time, to—to—”
“To get rid of me,” I helped him.
“When she went there, I got a job at a factory close handy. Even then I could see that we weren't going to hit it together for very long, because she was too blessed selfish and one sided for words, Mark. We had a row about every time I went to see her, and it got that way at the finish that I made up my mind to chuck the whole thing and let her go her own gait. Before I did that——” Clive continued, chuckling at the recollection, “Alice got in first and handed me the lemon herself.”
“Doesn't seem to be worrying you much,” I remarked.
“Worry!” exclaimed Clive, with feeling. “D'you know this, Mark, I was just as relieved and pleased about it, as you were yourself.”
I didn't undeceive him about how I had felt. For the first time in my life I was allowing a man to belittle a girl I liked, in order to pump news from him. I could go over his words later on and sift the wheat from the chaff.
New Year's Day in Stratford was usually the occasion of rowdy celebration amongst all the boys of the place. This year was no exception to the rule. As Clive stopped speaking a bloodthirsty crew calling themselves the Bomb Brigade, and armed with saltpetre bombs, ran into a posse of Sheriff's men, armed with cap pistols, and a desperate engagement ensued. The first bomb exploded under Clive's feet, and he jumped as if shot, and uttered an involuntary curse.
“Blast the boys! They oughtn't to be allowed in the streets.”
I glanced at him more closely. His face was rough with a three days' beard, his eyes bloodshot, and his hands shaky.
He bore all the signs of having just come off a lively jag.
“How long have you been in town, Clive?” I asked him.
“Since Christmas Eve,” he returned. “Came in to bust the cheque. Broke now. Out again tomorrow.”
Poor old Clive! He hadn't improved since the days when he was working for me, and saving up to get money enough to start farming on his own.
“It might amuse you, the way Alice turned me off,” he went on, quite evidently assuming that we were brothers in good fortune, in having escaped from her meshes. “It was when you were in hospital that time. I went to see her, and she turned on me like
“What happened then?” said I.
“Then? What could happen? I wasn't going to stand that from her. That tore it, as far as I was concerned, you can bet. I got wild with her, and we had a h—l of a row. She finished up by saying: ‘Go! Go! And I hope I never see your face again!’ and she hasn't!” ended Clive, with emphasis.
That was news to me. All sorts of wild ideas chased themselves through my head. What did it mean? Why did she dismiss Clive so summarily? Evidently she couldn't have been in love with him, after all. It was a queer business from start to finish.
As soon as I had ascertained to my own satisfaction that Clive had no more news to impart, I dropped him abruptly, much to his surprise, wheeled my bike out on to the road, and started for home.
I wanted to think; the crowd of people which had but a few minutes before amused and interested me, now only irritated and oppressed. I got home somehow, but it wasn't my fault; I don't know to this day how I accomplished it, and by the time I had arrived at my gate, I had thrashed out my problem and come to my decision.
Alice was free, there was no doubt of that, but she had left me of her own free will, and it was up to me as a man, as a gentleman, not to pester her with further attentions.
It was a mighty resolve, but I made it.
There was no sleep for me that night. The hours ticked away, and I tossed uneasily on my bed, thinking, wondering, worrying.
Why hadn't the Watsons told me? They must have known, because they were in constant communication with Alice. If I'd only been aware of the fact that Clive was no longer in the way I should have gone to see Alice long ago. Perhaps it was too late now. Perhaps some other fellow——
I turned from thoughts such as these to berate myself on the folly of still thinking of her. What did it matter, anyway, I tried to tell myself. The girl didn't care for me; her action in throwing me over showed that. Why should I worry over her any more. Besides, I had made my resolve. I had determined not to see her any more.
It was of no use. I tried to persuade myself that our parting was the best thing that could ever have happened to me. I reviewed all the different events that had happened since first I met the girl; her coldness, her casual treatment of me, her lack of sympathy; but I always came back to the same old ending. Always the charm of her silvery voice rang in my ear; the dimples and roses of her soft cheeks returned to my memory. I recalled the queer little demure smile, and the way her eyelashes seemed to throw a shadow over the sun's light, whenever she used them for veiling her bright eyes. The white flash of her teeth, the very method she had of doing her soft, fair hair—it all came back to me. And every graceful mannerism and gesture. Yes, I was just as mad about her as ever.
But I wasn't going to be a fool—I'd made up my mind about that. She didn't want me, and I was going to call on my pride and keep away from her.
And as for all this bosh about “true love,” it was all nonsense. There was no such thing. It was simply a virulent kind of a disease that got a man down, if he didn't watch himself, but if he fought against it, there was nothing in it. All he had to do was to guard his thoughts from admiring any one girl too much, and the disease hadn't a hope of getting hold. In future that's what I'd do. I'd jog quietly along, using common sense and judgment, until I'd completely forgotten Alice, and then I'd marry Elsie. I had decided.
Next morning I set about my work absent-mindedly. I endeavoured to follow out the line of reasoning laid down the night before, but the experiment was only a partial success. Alice's spirit seemed to haunt the whole place. If I went to stir the milk, her face seemed to look up at me from the shiny tin of the milk can; her voice kept time to the clatter of my milking-machine engine. She seemed to be saying: “Mark, Mark, Mark, I'm free! Mark, Mark, Mark, I'm free!” until I felt like stopping the engine and finishing the rest of the herd by hand. But never mind, she could call, but I wasn't going. Once was enough.
About this time I took to visiting the neighbours more frequently. I had to escape from my own thoughts somehow or other, or they would have sent me crazy.
I visited, but I was preoccupied and absent-minded, and it was not long before Mrs. Watson noticed the fact and commented on it.
“You don't seem yourself, Mark?” she said. “Is anything amiss?”
I came out of my brown study with a jerk to find Elsie eyeing me seriously.
“No, no!” I replied hastily, “I expect I'm sleepy, that's all. Too much work.”
“There's something else wrong with you, besides that,” said Elsie. “You haven't been yourself for the last twice we've seen you. Oh, Mark, I hope——” she paused, and what she hoped I never learnt.
“Come on, I'll play you draughts,” she suggested.
I made a special effort and managed to keep my mind on the game. It was almost as fagging as violent study, but I could see that Miss Elsie was quietly taking note of me, and she had to be put off the track. Elsie was a regular sleuth hound, in that way. She could see through me in a way that was almost uncanny, and I didn't want any of them to start thinking that I was letting thoughts of Alice worry me again. I put up a good bluff, that evening, but I don't think Miss Elsie was deceived for a single minute.
Shortly after this I received another big surprise. This time Mr. Treadwell was the bearer of the news. Although not by any means the constant visitor he used to be, in the olden days, Tready still condescended to patronise me about once a week or so. I had got the old chap summed up about right, I think, when I looked upon him as a good-natured, foolish, poisonous old scandalmonger. Kind enough at heart, he could no more leave his friends' and neighbours' affairs alone, than he could resist eating his three square feeds a day. Both of them were necessary to his existence.
I was busy handling a young horse when the old gentleman put in his appearance, and I wasn't any too pleased to see him. His visit was ill-timed, from my point of view, because in handling young horses it is essential that the whole of one's attention should be given. He got a cool nod from me, and an intimation to stand clear, and then I resumed my work.
The colt was proving touchy about the head, and I was having a lot of trouble teaching him to take the halter and bit. Except for that he was as quiet as a sheep.
After watching me in silence for half a minute, Mr. Treadwell advanced a step, and said:
“When I was down the South Island, we used to do it like this. I'll show you.”
Before I could warn him to keep clear he had advanced a further step, and reached out to take the halter. The colt knew me, and accepted my handling of him with resignation, but Mr. Treadwell was a stranger, and to be treated as such, and kept at a distance.
Before either of us could tell what was going to happen, he had reared up indignantly and lunged at the impudent intruder with his hoofs.
Mr. Treadwell dodged nimbly, but not in time to wholly escape. One hoof caught him on the knee.
“Well, you are the limit!” I couldn't resist telling him. “Don't you know enough to keep clear of a young horse?”
For reply, the old chap hopped about and groaned, and doubled himself into knots, and made such a protracted fuss about it, that finally I let the colt loose and helped him into the house.
He had a nice big knee, sure enough. I hoped it might teach him not to interfere with another man's method of horse-breaking again, a serious breach of farming etiquette, as he was old enough to know, but I don't suppose it had any effect on him.
I heated some water on the fire, gave him the embrocation, and in between the groans and bemoanings, while he was dressing the injured member, he gave me the latest news.
I usually took no notice of Tready's news; hardly bothered to listen to it, in fact, but this time he hadn't said ten words before he had managed to make me sit up and look interested. He seemed surprised at
“Yes,” he commenced, “She's back, all right, Mark. Great, isn't it? Fancy that girl having the nerve to come back to Stratford again after all we know about her.”
“What girl?” I had answered, in a listless manner. Old Tready was always talking about some girl or other, and I never thought of Alice in connection with the words.
“What girl! D'you mean to say you don't know that Alice Arnold is back this way again?” he demanded, almost forgetting his sore knee in his astonishment.
That's where I commenced to get interested. After the first start, however, I took hold of myself, and only allowed a polite attention to appear in my face. That was quite enough to wind the old boy up; eagerness would have frightened him off, and I wanted to hear.
It wasn't often that he had my whole attention, and he made the best of it.
“Yes, she's back, all right. No shame in her, Mark. Any other girl would have made a point of keeping clear of this part of Taranaki, after the way she behaved to you, but not her. Our Bob was talking to her on Saturday, so there's no mistake about it. Bob says she's lost all her good looks, and seems to be getting thin on it. I can pick what it is, Mark——” he continued, in his most impressive manner, “She's seen her mistake, and she's come back here again to try and get hold of you once more, that's what it is. Ha! Ha! You would be a fool, after the way she let you down. But I knew it! I seen what it was going to be, right from the start. I told you, didn't I? She'd pick and she'd choose, and flirt and jilt, and be so very particular, until now she's got left. If she's
He seemed to gloat openly on the thought that his miserable guess was correct.
If Mr. Treadwell had only known how near he came to getting bundled out of my kitchen, sore knee and all, he might have sobered up his face a little. I restrained my rising temper with an effort, however, and said, as calmly as I could:
“Perhaps she has had a touch of the ‘flu’; it's about, just at present.”
“Flu! Not it! The girl's sickly; I said so two years ago.”
“Well, I hope not,” I replied. “Poor girl! She has no home like most other girls, and it will be hard luck for her if she becomes ill.”
“She'll crack up within the next twelve months,” prophesied the old chap, with finality. “I've seen her kind before. You know——” he went on, “you were lucky to get out of that, Mark. Only think, if you had married her! A sick woman on your hands, just as you were beginning to feel your feet and get ahead of things. Why, it would put a man back for years!”
He eyed me for confirmation of his remarks. I had been getting madder and madder, as he drivelled on and on, until I was nearly ready to burst with anger. As soon as he stopped, I started.
“Look here, Mr. Treadwell,” I commenced, “You might get satisfaction out of the fact that a poor, helpless girl is ill, but I don't, so you needn't talk at me like that. If you want to know,” I continued, “I think as much of Miss Arnold as I ever did, and I'd marry her to-morrow, if she'd have me.”
I got carried away, when I said that, because I wasn't so sure if I would or not, when I thought it over afterwards.
Mr. Treadwell gasped and waved his hands wildly. He was so surprised that it fairly took his breath away. Words were beyond him.
What a strange mixture of a man he was. Even as he sat there I knew in my mind that if Alice were really down and out, he would offer her hospitality in his own home.
And then go about telling everyone he met how it was all her own fault, and why. He couldn't help himself. I knew he was going to leave my place and tell every neighbour for miles around that I was going to pick up with Alice again, and that I was a bit touched in the head with my troubles, and so on, but there was no way of stopping his tongue, short of cutting it out. I let him go.
The thought that perhaps Alice was in ill-health preyed on my mind continually. I knew the Treadwells, father and son, well enough to be aware that the story might be only an invention springing from their diseased minds, but on the other hand, it might be true. Perhaps if I went into town and saw the girl herself, it might ease my mind.
I shrank from the thought of meeting Alice, but the idea presented itself again and again. I had hoped never to see or hear of her again. In that way lay my only hope of peace, but if she was ill, I felt I ought to see her at least. Just possibly I might be able to help her in some way.
After milking, that night, I changed and called on the Watsons. We had never spoken of Alice since the day when Elsie had wanted to warn me about Clive, so they were surprised to hear me mention her name.
“Is it true that Miss Arnold is back in Stratford again?” I asked, as we were sitting before the front room fire, after tea. Elsie was out of the room at the time, and Peter and his wife looked across at each other.
“She's back, all right,” Peter admitted, knocking out the ashes of his pipe on the hob as he spoke. “Yes, she's back, all right. Doesn't know her own mind for two minutes together, that girl doesn't. First she'll work here, and then she'll work there, and next it will be somewhere else.”
“I heard she was not well,” I remarked.
“Unwell! No blessed wonder, the way she gads about,” growled Peter. “If she'd stop at home a bit more, instead of going off to a dance or something every other night in the week, she'd be all right. Too much flying around, that's what's wrong with her. The next thing that's going to happen, is a breakdown, and then we'll have her on our hands here, if she isn't careful.”
I looked enquiringly at Mrs. Watson.
“She hasn't been well,” Mrs. Watson admitted, “But I don't think it's because she goes out too much. I think she fancies a change of air might help her—that's why she is back in Stratford. I hope it does do her good, poor girl. If it doesn't, we must get her out here for a change and rest, but I hope there will be no need for that, Mark.” She sighed. “We don't see much of her now, you know. We seem to have lost touch with her. Perhaps it was my fault. I couldn't approve of her actions, at times, and of course you know what Alice is. The slightest hint of disapproval and she is up in arms directly. She never could bear censure or criticism over anything.”
“I think I remember noticing that trait in her character,” I remarked.
Mrs. Watson laughed outright.
“Yes,” said she, “You had an illustration of what I mean, didn't you?”
“Several times,” said I cheerfully. “But she's growing older. Perhaps she's getting more sense.”
“Sense!” grunted old Peter. “She hasn't got any, Mark! Never did have—and she's getting worse!”
I wondered what was wrong with the old chap; it wasn't often I heard Peter snapping as persistently as all that.
“Peter doesn't want her here,” explained Mrs. Watson, in reply to my look of surprise. “I don't, either,” she admitted. “But here she must come, just the same, if she has to leave her work and have a rest. She has my other sister in Hawera to go to, if she doesn't come here, but I know it will be hard for the Hawera people to keep her any length of time.”
“Poor old Alice!” I murmured, hardly conscious that I spoke aloud. “What a shame!”
“Surely you don't feel sorry for her?” said Mrs. Watson, in a startled voice. “Mark, you wouldn't—after the way she treated you?”
“Not him,” said Peter. “He doesn't care two straws about her. He wouldn't be discussing her if he did.”
I filled my pipe in silence. There was no answer, as far as I was concerned. I didn't know myself, how I felt about her, but I did know I was sorry for her. Without looking up, I could feel Mrs. Watson eyeing me in a puzzled way.
“I wonder—” she ventured, at length, “when our little Elsie is going to fall in love with someone?”
I kept silent. Without professing to be very bright, I could see through that question. Several times, at about that period, she had given me hints that she would be pleased if Elsie and I made a match of it.
I wished, with all my heart and soul, that it had been Elsie I had loved and wooed; it would have been a very different tale to tell; but it wasn't Elsie, it was Alice, and that was all about it.
“Plenty of time,” said Peter, when I failed to answer. “She's only a baby, yet.”
“She's nineteen,” pointed out Mrs. Watson. “I was being courted before I was that age.”
“Not by me, you weren't,” said Peter, sucking thoughtfully at his pipe.
“You! You don't imagine, my dear man, that you were the only suitor I ever had, surely?” remarked Mrs. Watson, with some spirit. “That's you men all over! You get your eye on some girl, and you imagine all you have to do is bide your own time and speak to suit yourself. Then, when the girl gets tired of waiting—and someone else comes along——”
“As I did,” chuckled Peter, losing his thoughtful look in a grin.
“You feel grieved because you get left,” concluded Mrs. Watson.
All that was for me, I knew, but what could I do? Elsie wouldn't marry me until I could confess to loving her, and as I couldn't do that without telling a lie, there the matter rested. My reason told me that Elsie was as nearly perfect a girl as I could wish to meet; my heart admitted thoughts of no girl other than Alice.
What a strange thing this love is, when a man thinks it over. Why should I be so hopelessly in love with Alice Arnold? A girl who didn't care for me and who I felt had only promised to marry me in the first place against her own better judgment. In the light of reason, Alice was the type of girl that I should have most carefully avoided. We got on one another's nerves, there was no gainsaying the fact, although I had refused to face it, in the first instance.
Although I excused her every thoughtless action, and found ways and means of explaining them away. yet deep in my heart I disapproved of the deeds I excused. In any other girl I should have had no difficulty in summing them up as cruel and heartless. Whenever my thoughts ran off in that direction, in thinking of Alice, I pulled myself up guiltily and felt ashamed.
And I always got back to this: Alice was Alice, different from all the rest. A girl with a face like hers couldn't be cruel and heartless. It was just that she had a highly strung nature; that she was too sensitive;
“Don't go rushing into town to see her, now,” admonished Mrs. Watson, as I was taking my leave that evening. “She's quite all right, and if she does get ill, and unable to work, we intend to look after her.”
“I shall avoid her for all I'm worth,” I replied. “I see no good in meeting her, if it can be helped. It will only make both of us uncomfortable. It won't be my fault if I ever see her again, although,” I added, “when I come to think of it, there's no earthly reason that I know of why we shouldn't meet again.”
“N-no,” admitted Mrs. Watson doubtfully. “Only it might embarrass her. She would probably feel ashamed to face you.”
“She needn't feel that,” I protested hastily. “Alice has absolutely no cause whatever to feel that way. She did perfectly right. It was no use her tying herself to a man that she couldn't care for.”
“But she might have discovered the fact a little sooner,” remarked Mrs. Watson drily. “There! Go on! I know you won't hear a word against her. Elsie calls you Don Quixote, and she is just about right.”
“Oh, but it isn't that way at all,” I tried to explain. “It was just an unfortunate occurrence that happened through us not knowing our minds properly.”
“You mean through Alice not knowing her own mind properly,” suggested Mrs. Watson. “All right, I won't say any more, only take my advice, Mark—” she grasped my arm as she spoke. “You know we are your friends; take my advice, leave Alice severely alone. She isn't worth your worry. There, it's my own niece I'm speaking about, too, but I mean every word of it.”
I went home thinking of Mrs. Watson's last words. They were pretty severe, and I wondered what Alice had done to her to make her so outspoken. I didn't believe them, of course, and finally explained them away to my satisfaction by thinking that Mrs. Watson thought she was doing me a good turn by frightening me off. Probably she saw—what I was beginning to think myself—that Alice and I could never be happy together. Our temperaments were too unequal. Even so, it was strange to get such straight speaking from her. Well, it didn't affect me I thought. I had decided long ago to forget, and her words were wasted, as far as concerned me, because I had resolved to keep away long before I'd heard them.
I prided myself on the bold face I was showing to the world. People were beginning to forget that I had ever had a girl. If it wasn't for those dusty rooms full of piled up furniture the whole thing might have been a dream. I should run that stuff into the auction mart, and let it go for what it would fetch. I was a fool. Why hadn't I done it long ago?
But I knew, even as I made the suggestion to myself, that that furniture would not be touched. Alice had picked that stuff, and to sell it would have been sacrilege. I wasn't forgetting as quickly as I wished to.
I kept to my word and made no attempt to see Alice, only going to the town at all when business demanded it. Then one Saturday afternoon I was forced to make a trip unexpectedly, in order to meet a brother of mine who had wired asking me to meet him.
I was strolling down to the town station, a few minutes before the New Plymouth train was due, when I heard light, tripping steps behind me, and a voice that I knew, only too well, said:
“Hullo, lame man. Aren't you going to speak to me?”
It was Alice. I turned around and stammered out some incoherent reply.
“Just the same old Mark!” she laughed. “Is your foot sore?”
“No, I always limp,” I replied. “I fell off the bike and hurt my leg, some time ago, and it has left me with a slight limp.”
“Oh, Mark!” she almost sobbed, “It was all through me, and the very first time I meet you again, I am laughing at it.”
“Don't be so silly,” I returned. “How could it be through you? It was just an accident, careless riding on my part.”
Alice looked prettier than ever. Her face was a shade thinner than the year before, and her skin had a delicate, transparent look, different from the vigorous glow of my time, but even more wonderfully beautiful I thought.
“I've been a frightful little beast to you, Mark, but you have forgiven me, haven't you?” she said, with an entreating look.
“There's nothing to forgive, Alice,” I returned slowly. “It was mostly my fault I expect. I've long ago realised that if I hadn't been so persistent in
She eyed me in a wistful, puzzled way and said:
“Then we are friends again?”
“I've never been anything else,” I replied, smiling.
Alice seemed at a loss, and for the first time in our acquaintanceship I felt at ease in her company and master of the situation.
“Then why haven't you been to see me since I came back this way?” she asked suddenly.
“Why should I?” I returned. “You showed me plainly enough that you didn't care for me; it's my place now to keep away and not annoy you further.
Alice stamped her foot, in the petulant style I knew so well, and the colour flooded to her cheeks in the old way.
“Ordinary civility should have been excuse for one call,” she said.
“Well, it wasn't,” I replied calmly. “I know you well enough, Alice, to be quite sure that if I paid an unwelcome visit to you, you would be quite capable of snubbing me to my face. I wasn't prepared to risk it. I've had all I want of that sort of treatment from you.” I said the last words quietly, and Alice gave a queer little sob in her throat.
“Mark, I wouldn't!”
“Well, you mightn't have, of course,” I admitted. “But it was too much of a gamble for me. Just be a bit reasonable, Alice. Have I any reason to call on you? Why should I? What earthly good could it be for either of us? Have you given me any reason to suppose that a visit from me would be welcome to you?”
“Now you are being cruel,” she returned, in a low voice. “I always gave you credit for a kind heart, Mark, but your words now are mean.”
“Mean or not mean,” said I determinedly, “I would have been a blithering idiot to have called on you without an invitation. Dash it! Can't you see
She flared up indignantly: “Oh! Why, pray?”
“Well, you will have it, Alice, I can see,” said I. “How could I go and call on the girl that jilted me for someone else, just a week or two before the wedding? Doesn't common sense tell you that the thing's impossible? I've still got some rags of pride left, you know, in spite of my cropper. What you suggest is impossible.”
“It's not impossible,” snapped Alice. “You say you have forgiven me? Why don't you show it?”
“Forgiving and forgetting are two very different things,” I returned soberly.
“I've still got a house full of furniture, and carpets, and rolls of wallpaper, all going mildewed and mouldy, to remind me of things, and while I recognise, as I said before, that it was chiefly my own fault, that doesn't help me to forget.”
Alice fell back a pace and put her hands to her face. The train whistled, entering the station, and with a “See you later,” I dashed away to find my brother.
It was my first visit from Bill. He had been in business on his own, in New Plymouth, but had sold out and was taking a holiday. Although I had borrowed £20 from him on first becoming engaged to Alice, I had not told him what the money was for, and he knew nothing at all about my love affair. I knew he would comment on all the furniture and stuff in the house, on his arrival, and began to wonder to myself how I should explain its presence there. Finally I decided to tell him the bare facts of the position, and let him fill in the details to suit his own imagination.
Alice had disappeared from view, on our reaching the street. I felt I wanted to hunt her up, and tell her how sorry I was, if I'd said anything to hurt her feelings, and explain that I didn't mean anything, and that it was all a mistake and cringe and apologise for being on the earth, in the old servile manner, but I overcame the feeling, and instead, Bill and I went into the Club Hotel and had a “spot.”
The week Bill put in with me effectually kept my mind off the subject. I gave him a whimsical account of the reason the house was only half furnished, and he thought it would be a good plan if I unpacked everything, finished repapering the rooms and laying the oilcloths, and engaged a married couple to help me run the farm. It was a jolly good suggestion, too. I had an idea I might give it a trial the next season. It was hardly worth bothering about for the remainder of the present year.
Sometimes I felt sorry I had left Alice at the station in such an abrupt manner; more often I was pleased about it. It showed that I was not the helpless slave I had been in other days. Then, I could never have spoken to her, or rushed away in that casual way; now, I felt no compunction about it. Evidently I was clear of the spell.
Clear of it or not, I found I still kept thinking of her. She was paler and thinner, of that there was no doubt. Was it only imagination, or was she also quieter and less imperious. I hoped she wasn't really unwell. Perhaps a chap ought to go and see her, after all. No! The Watsons were keeping an eye on her, and what could I do, anyway?
For one thing, it wasn't any of my business, and if I commenced to pry around trying to find out things, I should probably hurt the feelings of all concerned. The Watsons wouldn't like it, and it was almost sure that any attempt on my part to find out Alice's position, financially or otherwise, would be
Alice told the Watsons that she had seen me, and they were openly relieved, I could see, to think that we had met and got it over.
“I'm so glad you have got over your attachment for Alice,” Mrs. Watson informed me. “It would never have done; you can see that for yourself, now, can't you?”
I could see it, but I wasn't satisfied, just the same. Why should Fate deal out the kind of blow that had been dealt to me? Surely, in the scheme of things, there was a proper reason for a genuine, all consuming passion. I couldn't help adoring Alice. I didn't try to fall in love with her. It commenced with our first meeting, and in spite of all our differences, all her efforts to choke me off, here I was still, as crazy about her as ever.
Had a man to go directly against his own finer feelings, and rely simply on his common sense, in order to live his life out properly? If I did that, and relied solely on the verdict of my brain, I should put Alice out of my heart forever, and never even bother to think of her.
But would I be right? Why was the love of her given to me, if my right and proper course lay in forgetting her? I had never singled her out and said: “This is a nice girl; I'll fall in love with her,” or anything of the sort.
As a matter of fact, I didn't want to meet any girl and fall in love, at the time I had fallen for Alice's charms. My farm was at that time yielding such poor returns, and I had such a miserable little shack to live in, that I had sensibly decided not to think of marriage until I had worked up the place and made it profitable. At the most optimistic calculation, that meant two to three years of hard work and stinting on my part.
And then I had looked into that girl's face, and listened to her soft, drawly voice, and that was the end of me. And here I was, three years later, still under the thrall, and only keeping the fact to myself because it was up to me as a man to do so. If Alice so much as waggled her little finger at me I knew what was going to happen. If she was ill, and would only let me help her, I would cheerfully have pawned the farm and everything else I had in order to be of service to her, and I would have done it proudly, cheerfully, and never once looked back or begrudged a single penny of it.
Then one day things took a new turn. I was talking with Stan Collins, and it was something he said that gave me the great idea. Stan knew my attitude when Alice's name cropped up in conversation, and was always careful to speak of her with tact and moderation.
“It's a pity about poor little Alice,” he said to me.
“What's a pity?” I wished to know.
“About this nerve trouble she has. I hear that the doctors advise her to take a six months' rest, and not do a single tap of work of any sort. And by right she ought to cut out office work for good.”
That was the first time I had actually heard what the trouble was. I had supposed it to be merely a general run down of health.
“Wonder what she'll do?” I murmured.
“Blest if I know,” said Stan. “She's a plucky little thing, a man has to admit that. Says she's going to keep on working as long as she can, until she has a fair amount saved up, and then take a long holiday with the money, and see what that does. She won't come out here and stop with her aunt, did you know that?”
I was surprised. “I wonder why?”
“Well, I could give you old Tready's reason,” said Stan, cautiously. He gave a quiet grin, and looked expectantly at me, and I laughed in return.
Go ahead, spit it out,” I invited him.
“Well, the old chap reckons the reason she refuses to come out and stop with the Watsons, is because she thinks you are sweet on Elsie, and she's jealous Of course, I don't believe it myself,” he added.
“It's a damned lie!” I roared. “I'll wring that old fool's neck some of these days if he doesn't leave me alone.”
“I thought it wasn't true,” said Stan complacently. “I can generally pick that sort of thing a mile off. Matter of fact, I've got a lot of time for Elsie, myself,” he admitted. “Jolly fine girl!”
“Go in and win, old fellow,” I advised him.
“Me? She wouldn't look at such a deadly fool as me!” Stan answered, with just too forced a laugh I thought.
It struck me I recognised the signs. Evidently poor old Stan had caught a touch of the disease. It had all the hall marks, as far as it went, of a genuine case, too, and I felt I was competent, under the circumstances, to form an opinion.
According to my humble judgment he had just reached the stage where it seemed to him that the object of his fancy wore wings, and if he didn't wear cloven hoofs and a tail, himself, it wasn't because he didn't deserve to.
A little friendly encouragement does a lot of good, at that place, so I decided to help him. I liked Stan. He was a clean, straight-forward chap, sober and steady, and with enough brains to enable him to hold his own with most people.
“Don't be a chump,” I told him. “If you like the girl, go for your life. Do as I did when I went courting. Make a blithering ass of yourself in front of people. Keep pushing yourself forward, and on her notice, on all possible and impossible occasions, and don't take any notice of snubs, or anything else. If any rivals appear on the scene, use physical violence
Stan looked glum. “I won't have to crack you, that's one consolation,” he remarked, after thinking my advice over.
“No,” said I, “You can take it from me, Stan, if you do make a hit with Miss Elsie, I'll be the first man to come along and wish you good luck.”
I wished Stan every success, because I could see that my affections were permanently fixed, and I could see that without offering Elsie the real thing, I had about as much chance of marrying her as the man in the moon had. I didn't want to, anyhow. I had got past the “seek consolation” stage, and all I wanted to do was to follow out my destiny and see where it took me to.
About this time I began to feel hopeful and expectant. I didn't quite know what I hoped for, or expected to happen, only the idea took possession of me that sometime in the future there was going to be a change. Something big was going to happen. All that life required of me was that I should keep on and play the game, and sometime or other I would reap the reward. I gave up trying to tear Alice's image from my heart. If I was fated to love her, I thought, why should I kick against the pricks. Instead of that, why not exert myself once more and prove my regard by helping her. But that was the rub! How could I help her? She was a proud little thing, I knew that. Stan's words proved it as well. I thought I knew why she had refused to accept the hospitality of her relations; it was because she knew in her heart that they didn't really want her there. It would be charity, and Miss Alice wasn't having any.
What could I do?
Then suddenly the great idea came to me. The way to help Alice out of all her troubles. If only she would marry me!
“Pshaw!” I muttered to myself, “What a fool I am!”
It was not a bit of good. The thought kept on coming back, do what I might to banish it. Gradually I added to it. If I asked Alice again, I would have to keep from her any suspicion that I knew how she was situated. If she suspected that there was the faintest tinge of sympathy mixed with my regard, her independence would assert itself, and I would have my attempt for nothing.
Even if I convinced her that my love was just as great as formerly, and that I worshipped the very ground she trod on, it was a question whether I should succeed or not. All the odds were against me. She had thrown me over once, and it was hardly likely she would feel any different about it now. Without knowing very much about the whims and vagaries of the fair sex, I knew enough to be sure that once they have formed and expressed their opinion on any man, they are mighty hard to change.
It was hardly likely that Alice would care enough about me to consider the renewal of our engagement. Nil desperandum! I could only find out by trying.
“I won't be any the worse off,” I thought. “even if she does say ‘no,’ and perhaps my offer may have the effect of bucking up her spirits a bit.” Surely the knowledge that she inspired such a constant regard as mine, must be of some help to her, even if it only gratified her vanity, and I hoped Alice would feel and appreciate it more than just that way.
As soon as I had arrived at my decision I wrote to Alice, asking if I could call and see her on Sunday afternoon, as I had something of importance to communicate.
I put in some solid thinking, while composing that letter. In it's way, it was a work of art. I didn't want her to guess what I intended to say, and yet I had to make the letter sufficiently vague and interesting to arouse her curiosity, without letting the cat out of the bag.
It served the purpose, anyhow. Alice wrote back a gracious reply, saying that she would be home all Sunday, and only too pleased to see me if I cared to call.
I had none of the trembling trepidation that used to assail me on former occasions when I courted the girl. Even the thought of downright failure left me undismayed. I had travelled the whole gamut of sensations, in my dealings with her, and now I had arrived at a state of quiet determination. I would do my best, and if I failed, well, that was in the hands of Providence. At least I would have done all that lay in my power to help the girl I professed to love better than life itself. If it meant a further humbling of my pride, so be it! A man's love was not worth much if he let thoughts of pride influence him.
No need for me to worry. A man could only do his best.
In this frame of mind I prepared for Sunday.
On Sunday I attired myself with special care, and went into town. I felt calm and steady. No matter what the answer was, I knew I would be able to face the thing out without any of the extremes of passionate feeling I had been subject to in our former meetings.
Alice was dressed in white and wore a small bunch of violets as her only touch of colour. Her white frock seemed to accentuate the alabaster transparency of her complexion, and a wave of tenderness went through me as I gazed on her fragile loveliness.
Whatever the outcome, I told myself, I mustn't fail to-day through my own fault.
She gave me her hand and invited me into the sitting room of the house she was stopping at. It was a fine, sunny day, and I suggested that we go for a walk instead, and Alice said:
“Oh, yes! Let's go and sit in the park, it's lovely in there.”
We strolled around to the park gate almost in silence. Alice, I could see, was nervous and flurried, while I was carefully thinking out how I should open the conversation.
“Alice,” I commenced, when we had found a seat in a shady spot, “I've tried and tried, but it's no use. I can't forget you; I can't cease to love you; and I can't get back to peace of mind without you. I want you to reconsider your decision and give me another trial.”
“Mark!” she gasped. “You can't? You don't—”
Words seemed to fail her, and she gazed piteously at me with her lips parted.
I nodded. “Yes I can, and I do,” I assured her. I reached for her little hand and took it gently in mine.
“I'm more in love than ever, dear,” I said to her, “And only you can ever give me peace and hope. Think, Alice, before you turn me down. It means all the world to me.”
If my voice had cracked and played me false, in my first proposal to Alice, it stood by me this time. Then I had seen in her an angel, divine, unapproachable; this time, I spoke to a dear little, helpless girl. A girl I wanted to take into my arms and comfort and reassure, and guard and cherish for always.
She remained silent for a long time, after I had spoken, but I had no fear. I could feel the response of her soft fingers in mine, and I sat quietly waiting.
Presently she ventured, in a quiet little voice:
“You really, really, mean it, Mark?”
For answer I tilted her soft chin with my hand, and kissed her full on her warm, red lips.
The park was drenched with the golden glow of the warm sunshine; in the near distance we could hear happy childish laughter from the playing greens; the singing of the birds, the soft sighing of the breeze in the trees—all were blotted out in that one glorious moment.
We came back to earth again to hear a tittery giggle. Three girls were strolling past, arm in arm. At any other time this would have embarrassed me very much, but now I only scowled at them.
“What does it matter?” said the usually so modest Miss Alice. “They only wish they were half as happy!”
We sat on, and found a sympathy in our companionship that had never been with us before. Words were not needed. There was a tender light in Alice's eyes that told me more than words could say.
“Mark,” she said, presently, “It was the fall off your bike that time that changed me. Oh, how dreadful I felt! I knew it was all my fault, and I knew I had exchanged the gold for the dross.”
“Never mind,” said I, “It has been a good thing for both of us, perhaps. It has taught us the value of true love, and it has disciplined us. Let's never allude to the past again. We'll look forward to the future instead.”
“I'm so glad everything is right, now,” Alice volunteered shyly, soon after. “It's such a relief in another way, too. I won't worry any more, and perhaps my silly nerves will get better, and not give me any more headaches and bad eyes.”
“We'll get married as soon as ever I get the house straightened up,” I announced. “You won't need to worry your little head over rows of figures, or hammer on that jolly old typewriter any more. You come out, and stop with your auntie until I get things all fixed up for you.”
“Oh, I couldn't do that!” exclaimed Alice, in distress.
“Why not?” I wanted to know.
“Because—well, I don't think they would care to have me there,” replied Alice, hesitatingly.
“Nonsense!” was my reply. “I bet they'll all be jolly wild, if you don't come out to stop with them. You'll have to be married from their house, anyway.”
With a return of her old perversity, Alice absolutely refused to consider the idea.
I didn't let it worry me. I had found out how to handle my little lady, and I just kept coming back to the subject, and assuming each time that she had changed her mind and accepted my view.
When I returned home that afternoon we had made all our arrangements. The marriage was to be as soon as ever the necessary formalities would allow it, and as it was still in the busy part of the year, I was to take Alice straight to our home, and we promised ourselves a honeymoon later on when the cows would be dry.
I called on the Watsons at once to break the news to them. Mr. Stan was there, evidently following my advice. Elsie congratulated me on the happy ending.
“I knew all along that you hadn't forgotten her,” she assured me, with a shy little smile.
“I hope you will have just as good luck as me, little sister,” I told her, glancing at Stan as I spoke.
Elsie and I can understand each other in a way that is almost unbelievable. She didn't reply, but I knew my guess was going to be correct.
Poor old Stan didn't know, though. He was undergoing that peculiar process common to all men in love for the first time, of analysing his faults and failings, and comparing them with the virtues and wonderful good qualities of the adored one. It's a thankless task, and very discouraging, and I could see that the poor chap hadn't much hope of bridging the awful gap, but was just hanging on despairingly, hoping against hope.
I could have given him a little comfort, I suppose, but I didn't. I thought it would be for the good of his soul if he went through the torture in the usual, time-honoured way.
Now Elsie is one of the tenderest little things in the world, and yet it was absolutely heartrending to see the way she kept that poor beggar grilling on the rack of suspense. Which just confirms a theory I've had for some time, that before a nice girl will show a man that she returns his love, she has to prove to her own satisfaction first, that he loves her well enough to suffer the tortures of the damned for her. When she's really convinced of that she puts in the rest of her life expiating her heartless treatment of the courting days, by waiting on her victim hand and foot for the rest of her days.
Mrs. Watson wrote to Alice that same evening, begging her to leave town at once and stop with them until the wedding.
Alice gave in when she got that letter, and left Stratford at once.
Every body helped me for the next month. A working bee came along and trimmed all the garden hedges, and gave me a hand to paper all the rooms. Arty Wilcox volunteered to run the farm for a week, thus allowing us to consider the question of a honeymoon, after all.
Alice and I still squabbled and argued when I went to see her at her aunt's, but now I didn't mind it. I rather enjoyed her little tempers, as a matter of fact. Instead of talking “up” to her, or rather trying to talk up to her as I used to do, in fear and trembling half the time lest I should say the wrong thing, I simply talked at her. She wasn't something supernatural any more; she was my girl. It answered much better than the old way, and if she argued too much with me, I wasn't above bullying her a bit, either.
Mr. Treadwell said I was a fool. I would live to rue my mad folly. If I'd followed his advice (although I don't ever remember him giving it) I should marry Elsie, and let Alice go.
He picked us to lead a cat and dog existence, and prophesied that about five years would see us separated; or else Alice would be dead, and I ruined for life with hospital and doctor's expenses.
I don't know to this day, if I could have married Elsie or not. If she did have a secret regard for me at any time, other than just platonic friendship, she kept it well hidden. Somehow, I don't think she would have married me, although there is no doubt that at one time I seriously considered the possibility. If I ever did have any chance with her, I lost it for ever when I started to worry again about Alice after her return to Stratford.
Had I followed the reasoning of my brain alone, Elsie is the girl I should have tried to win, but I followed a higher call than that. I followed the one great call, that comes to every man sooner or later in his life; the call that stirs a man to his very soul, and awakes all that is best in his nature. The call of true love. And to the girl who inspired me with such a great passion I freely gave all that was worth while in my make-up. All the tenderness, reverence, and affection, of which my heart was capable, I tendered to Alice. To-morrow is my wedding day, and only time can tell whether I was right or not, but I am not afraid. I have clung to my ideals, and I am not afraid to face the future. I look forward to it; it will vindicate what I have always believed. In the face of the reasoning of friends and onlookers I have followed the dictates of my own heart, and I pin my faith on the ultimate issue in the certainty that a great love is God's finest gift, and not to be lightly put aside or over-ruled.
* * *
The other day I came into the house unexpectedly, and found Alice seated in the drawing room, surrounded by dusty papers. She had been crying; the first time since our marriage, so I took fright at once.
“What's wrong, sweetheart?” I said, rushing over to her.
“Mark,” she replied, “I found this story of yours up on a top shelf in your workshop. I simply couldn't help crying over it.”
“Shouldn't go prying about amongst my things,” said I. “But if that's all that's wrong, we'll soon fix that. I'll burn the silly rubbish.” I swooped the paper up into my arms, and walked towards the open fireplace.
In an instant Alice had jumped to her feet, in that impetuous way she has, and was between me and the fire.
“You dare, Mark Woodford! If you burn that story I'll never forgive you as long as I live.”
“Well,” said I, “I only wrote it in the first place to pass the long evenings away, and if it makes you cry, I don't intend to have it littering up this establishment, I assure you. All the writings in the world are not worth a single tear from my little wife.”
“Foolish boy!” replied Alice. “I cried for pleasure, to find you loved me so much. No——” she continued. “I intend to have the names altered in this story, and then we'll send it to some publisher in New Zealand. Then, when it's in book form, I'm going to have a copy of it placed in a prominent place in every room in the house.
“Why every room?” I asked.
“Because then, whenever I feel snappy, or discontented, or snobbish, I'm going to rush straight to the nearest book and dip in.”
“What good will that do?” I enquired stupidly.
“Don't you see?” pointed out Alice. “There's a personal rebuke for me in every page of that story.
“I don't want you to feel meek and humble and mean,” I returned. “And as for there being a rebuke to you in every page, I'm sure I never put it there. I never expected anyone else but myself would ever read it, but all through I think I showed that you were never to blame in the things that happened.”
“That's the rebuke,” replied Alice calmly. “Go on, don't argue with me about it. You know I always know about these things better than you.”
She pushed me outside the door, laughingly, and I returned to my work.
That night I waded through the stuff again, from beginning to end. I wanted to find out where that rebuke came in and why the yarn should make her cry.
Alice is hard to understand at times, even yet. I couldn't find anything to hurt her feelings from start to finish, but I know this, if it is published, and copies of it kept all over our house, it's going to be a standing rebuke to me.
About six different quarrels, two fights, and a meditated murder, and all over a simple business like courting a girl—a thing most young men call “pleasure.” I know who's going to feel rebuked.
But perhaps the publishers won't accept it.
* * *