Wild, Wild Heart/Chapter 4

Although Rodney Marsh apparently kept his promise with regard to Hicky, and Tirau “cut out” (or, in other words, finished the shearing) without a hitch, trouble was in store for Dick Holmes. Almost within an hour after they had “cut out” at the woolshed, the weather changed. A bitterly cold gale from the south came up with torrents of rain. For five days it continued. Five disastrous days as far as the newly-shorn sheep were concerned.

Holmes, Marsh, Macdonald (the second shepherd), Pratt, and Dan, the Maori cow-boy, were working from dawn till dark; but though through their efforts they were able to effect some saving of stock, the loss in sheep and lambs was very heavy. The roads for a short period were almost impassable. One lorry taking wool bales down the coast got hopelessly bogged and Holmes was unable to get the rest of the clip to Wairiri in time for the November wool sales.

Though Biddy—in spite of Ann’s efforts to suppress her—had talked one morning of “the Bank” not being nice to Daddy about “the mortgage,” Ann thought Holmes’s harassed appearance might possibly be due more to the strain of hard work than to financial worry; for he gave no sign of any monetary embar​rassment, and Ann had no grounds—beyond the hint let fall by Rodney Marsh during the shearing—for believing that all was not well with him and with the station.

During these days of driving rain Ann and the little girls had to run up to the school-room sheltered under mackintoshes and umbrellas; and they sat there all the morning with a blazing fire of logs roaring in the open fireplace. Had it not been for the thought of the poor dying stock, and the worry and monetary loss for Mr. Holmes, Ann would have thoroughly enjoyed this tempestuous week. They were so cozy up there in the school-room during the mornings—she and the little girls quite happy together—and in the afternoons, clad in oilskins and old hats, they rode out in the drenching rain either across the soaked paddocks to the beach, where huge breakers came thundering in upon the sand, or along the muddy roads to Omoana for the mail.

Gerald Waring rode over, and spent one afternoon and evening at Tirau. But there wasn’t much chance of bridge, for Holmes was too exhausted to remain up late, and Ann escaped early with a book to her room. Mrs. Holmes was no longer suffering from nerves, and no one could have been sweeter or more charming than she was now to all the household. Ann had succeeded in eluding Waring during his visit; but the knowledge that he was incensed thereby did not depress her. On the contrary, reprehensible though she knew the feeling to be, she found the situation exciting, and not unpleasant. At least he should learn that every woman he condescended to notice didn’t respond with alacrity to his advances. But at the same ​time Ann’s vanity was flattered by his badly concealed annoyance.

The gale blew itself out, and soon afterwards spring was definitely left behind and summer came with a rush. The ordinary routine of station life was resumed, polo practice re-commenced, and it seemed as though the bad luck following upon the shearing was forgotten.

Ann and the little girls were picnicking on the beach. They had started off directly after lunch, Jo riding on a sheepskin strapped on to her pony’s back, and Ann mounted on the well-behaved station hack Holmes had allotted to her. She was not yet secure enough to look after anything beyond herself, so Biddy carried the billy and cakes for tea in a sack—a pikau the Maoris called it—slung across the front of her saddle. They tethered the horses in the shade of some karaka trees, undressed in the shelter of a little patch of bush growing beside the creek, and then dashed across the heavy log-strewn sand to the foaming margin of the sea. It was a perfect afternoon. Hot sunshine, blue sky and sea, white tumbling waves, and gulls wheeling and crying above the headlands, and the wet firm sand near the water’s edge. Glorious just to be alive on a day like this! The surf was not too heavy; only sufficient to buffet one a little. Ann, swimming out further than the children dared to go, could keep an eye on them, and was as happy and as carefree as they. Later, dressed and pleasantly tired, they boiled the billy and had tea. Then the little girls, barefooted, raced off to play on the beach, and Ann sat in the shade, and got out the book which she had brought ​with her. She always provided herself with books on these excursions, though she did not always open them. Sometimes she played with the children—enjoying their games almost as much as they did—or lay idly dreaming, looking up at the blue sky, and listening to the sound of the surf, and the gulls, and the locusts rasping in the hot sunshine of the hillside. Her thoughts traveled back to England. A lovely land, but not more beautiful than the wild freedom of this new country; and she felt a sense of pity for the millions now in the gray cities there, treading grimy pavements through November fogs. Mrs. Holmes might sigh for London shops. Ann felt she didn’t care if she never saw a shop window again! Sunshine, blue seas and skies—silver beaches—hills that were blue and mauve and purple in the distance—deep green of the fern-filled bush—this was God’s shop window! She could be happy here for the rest of her life.

The sound of a horse moving through the dried brushwood near at hand made her look up, and she saw Rodney Marsh riding towards her. She hailed him cheerfully.

“Hallo. Where are you off to?”

“Just been round looking at some of the fences,” he answered.

“Have a cup of tea?”

“I don’t mind if I do,” he answered.

This was a form of reply she’d grown accustomed to lately. It always amused her mildly. The obligation of receiving was thus in some subtle fashion transmuted into a condescension of acceptance.

“I’d rather make you some fresh. It’s rather stewed in the billy.”

“I like it stewed—so long as it’s hot.”

​He dismounted, threw his bridle reins across a stump, and came towards her. Ann rose to get the tea from the billy, steaming over the embers of the camp fire.

He threw himself down on the fern near the spot where she had been sitting, and Ann brought him the tea. Again she was a little amused at his calm acceptance of her services, and at her own meekness in proffering it. “He’s a working-man and I’m what the world would call a lady,” she thought. “And yet here I am running about waiting on him.” Well, what did it matter? She liked him—was quite pleased to have him to talk to. Why not be happy and natural, instead of standing on her dignity? So having supplied him with food, she sat beside him. One of his eyes was still a trifle darkened from the fight, but that didn’t detract from his good looks. Why weren’t all human beings like this? Beautiful, with the beauty of perfect form and physical fitness. It was a sheer joy just to look at him. And in her mind she began to picture the splendid Juno-like woman he ought to marry and the beautiful strong-limbed children they would have!

Over the edge of the enamel cup his eyes met hers fixed upon him.

“Well?” he said. “What now?”

She laughed. “I was just wondering...”

“Wondering what?”

“Speculating rather impertinently about your future.”

“What about my future? Am I going to win the steeplechase at the Omoana races next month?”

“I didn’t know there were to be any races. No, it was something more important than that.”

​“It must have been darmed important then. What was it?”

“I was wondering what sort of girl you’d eventually marry. She should be big and strong and handsome—a sort of young Diana.”

“Marry!” he exclaimed contemptuously. “Do you think I’d be fool enough ever to get married?”

“I don’t know yet how great a fool you can be. But marriage isn’t foolish—lots of wise people in the world have married.”

“That’s all you women ever think about—love and marriage. Rot!”

“Other people—men—have thought love of some importance, you know. Here’s one who believed it to be worth writing poems about.” She picked up one of the books. “If you could ever express in words anything a hundredth part as beautiful as some of these verses, I’d be proud to feel I’d known you.”

“Huh! A poet! A poet isn’t a man.”

“You’re very self-satisfied and very ignorant, you know,” said Ann, eyeing him dispassionately. “On the whole I’m a trifle sorry for that nice, big, handsome girl you’re going to marry some day.”

“Don’t waste your pity,” he returned, unmoved. “As the little boy said about the apple-core—there ain’t going to be no girl!”

Ann suddenly dropped her bantering tone.

“What’s your objection to marriage?” she asked.

“Marriage is right enough for women.”

“But not for men?”

“What does a man gain by tying himself up for good and all to one woman?”

“He gains companionship.”

​“I can get that without marriage. There are plenty of women in the world.”

Ann shot a sidelong glance at him. She had been talking to him—teasing him—as though he were an inexperienced boy. Suddenly she realized he was more than that. He was a man, living the ordinary life of most men. There were always Mrs. Bentleys to be found by such as he.

“Why should a man deliberately walk into a cage?” he went on. “What does he get out of it? The joy of providing for a pack of kids, and for a woman who nags at him if he doesn’t always behave like a Sunday school teacher. I choose to be free to live my own life.”

“Not like a Sunday school teacher,” commented Ann, drily.

“Not like a milk-and-water poet, anyhow.”

“What do you know about poets?”

“Quite as much as I want to know.”

“Which is—just nothing.”

He laughed good naturedly.

“And you know a lot, I suppose.”

“Not much, but considerably more than you do, I should say.”

“Well, I should like to make a bet with you that this chap”—he picked up the book she had laid down—"who writes so beautifully about love, didn’t know the first thing about men—real men—and how they live. He’d probably never tasted anything much stronger than lemonade.”

“Is that a test of manhood?”

“I wouldn’t give much for a man who’d never been drunk.”

​“And so you’re presuming that ‘this chap,’ as you call him, was one of the lemonade brigade.”

“I’ll bet he was.”

“You’ve made rather a bad shot this time. The man who wrote these poems happens to have died from the effects of what you’d call manliness.”

“Drink?”

She nodded.

“He died when he was only forty-seven from tuberculosis—but the disease was brought on by dissipation.”

“Is that true?”

“Quite true.”

“And he wrote beautiful things?”

“Very beautiful things—but he lived and died in poverty and squalor—a hopeless drunkard.”

“All right,” he said. “You’ve scored. Read me something he wrote, and I’ll tell you what I think of it.”

“That’ll be worth hearing, won’t it?” she observed sarcastically. But her sarcasm left him unscathed.

“You’ve got to prove to me he was a poet.”

“I’ve proved he was a man by saying he was a drunkard?”

“Well, I’d rather listen to a man who’d lived hard, than to a mother’s darling. There—read that!”

He opened the book at random, and pointed to the head of the page.

“You have a very commanding way with you, haven’t you?” she asked, again with the little touch of dryness in her voice.

“Go on,” he answered.

And so Ann, with a little smile, “went on.”

​“It’s called ‘Daisy’—this poem,” she said.

She stopped, and looked down at him. He was stretched out beside her on the fern, his old hat half tilted down on his face, his clear brown eyes gazing out over the beach, white in the hot sun—over the tumbling waves, to the empty blue plain of the sea.

“That’s not bad,” he admitted. “Go on. Let’s hear what it’s all about.”

Ann went on. She read well, and the beauty of what she read was very real to her:

There was a movement beside her, and she stopped again. He was looking up at her with a little frown. Something strange and intent was in his eyes. Then he turned towards the sea again.

“Is that enough?”

“No, go on to the end.”

Ann read on until she finished the poem, and then she closed the book.

“Well,” she asked mockingly, “do you pass him as a poet as well as a man?”

“You’ve told me my opinion isn’t worth anything,” he answered; “but that stuff isn’t too bad.”

Ann laughed, and he got up.

​“Well, thanks for the tea, and the lecture on poetry.”

“And marriage,” she answered. “I’ll look forward to meeting Mrs. Rodney Marsh some day.”

“You’ll be looking forward a mighty long time then” replied Marsh grimly. “Good-by.”

He mounted his horse and rode off. Ann called to the little girls, and they began packing up the tea-things. But when they reached home, and she was changing for dinner, she found that her old paper-covered copy of Thompson’s poems was missing. She must have forgotten to put it in her pocket when leaving the beach.

Well, no one ever visited the beach except themselves, and they were going down to bathe again on the following day. She would find it then. Yet, though she and the children searched diligently for the book on their next picnic, it was nowhere to be found. “I must have lost it riding home,” Ann thought regretfully, and grieved for her loss. She knew it would probably be impossible to replace the book in Wairiri. She had already discovered that new countries are not very greatly preoccupied with poets.