ISLE OF BEAUTY—HISTORIC KAWAU

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 165, 14 July 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

ISLE OF BEAUTY —HISTORIC KAWAU

Youth and Age. JVhat impressed me most, after Mary's entire selflessness, was her unnatural and unreasoning docility. So utter a submission to fate was not a healthy sign at her age. She seemed already so buffeted by life that the future held for her neither hope nor fear Backblocks life at its most cruel had taken harsh toll of her. During the next two years I saw her from time to time, as they drifted from one farm to another, and she seemed always thinner and smaller, but quite submissive and uncomplaining. At last she wrote to me that she was to be married, and for a time I rejoiced. But when I met the bridegroom I was appalled and indignant, for he was a well-known figure in their district —a of middle age, mean, surly, ignorant and dull, living in sordid squalor, while reputed a man of means.

I went to Mary and begged her to reconsider this fatal step. Simply the position was fhat, with the older children growing up, she was no longer needed, and must "get out." I begged her to come to me for a time, falsely representing myself as an untidy and feckless old bachelor, needing a woman's kindly touch. She put that patiently aside, only saying quietly: "You forget how well I know your ways."

And then the truth came 6ut. The wretched father had borrowed money from this man, and Mary and Mary's labour (for he milked a large herd of cows) were to be his pound of flesh. I do not know which shocked me most— the bargain or Mary's quiet acceptance of it. I could not pierce her apathy, and at last I realised that the sordid unceasing struggle of her life had blunted and destroyed in her that innate fineness which had once drawn me to her. I went away sick at heart. It was six months later that the end came. Mary was dying of fever and would like to see me, "if it isn't too much trouble," the message said. How like Mary, that touch! I went to her at once, but I was too late. Overwork, bad drains, malnutrition had done their work. "And then she never tried," the doctor complained. "I never saw such a case. Such apathy! Always the same answer when you asked if she wanted anything: TSTo, thank you, just to rest.' She honestly seemed to enjoy dying."

I stayed to see the last of Mary. I helped to lift the small plain coffin, light as a child's, on to the farm wagon—her unpretentious hearse! There were no flowers but mine, and even those seemed strangely out of place. Symbols o£ youth, and joy and love, what place hadj you in that short life of sordid sfcrugglqj and barren endes^ourl