CUPID'S COURT-MARTIAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21118, 27 February 1932, Page 7 (Supplement)

CUPID'S COURT-MARTIAL.

By G. HAItRISON,

With a dislike for liis errand MacFayne got slowly through his fenco wires, bent on a word with his neighbour about those blessed Scotch thistles. Skirting a plenteous crop of theni lie strolled over to where the young man was mooning about near his whare, and, after a none too friendly greeting from him, ventured to call his attention to the terrible army of thistles invading his own boundary.

" How about cutting a few heads off, Arthur, before it's too late? I'd give you a hand." the farmer began with a wellmeant offer, only to have his own head snapped off by a curt refusal. Rather unfortunately Arthur Weston hail wanted another'hand—Mary MacFayne's—and had asked for it that very morning, unknown to her father. And she had said, "No thanks!" the young man reflected, anil as good as told him all about these confounded thistles herself, to say nothing of what an idler lie was! So out came his answer. He wanted no assistance to mind his own business, with other remarks the farmer wasted no time in listening to. With a resigned, "Heigho!" for the ill wind that soon would be blowing his paddocks 110 good, Andrew MacFayne got back through his fence to carry on with more profitable work. As the day wore on Arthur Weston found solitude little balm for his sore, and on an impulse decided to be quit of Hamblcdou altogether. Then the sight of Joe Gordon, his neighbour 011 the other side, gave him the idea of offering his farmlet to the man whose land did not lie in the direction of the district's picvailing wind. So he crossed toward him. Joe left his work to meet the other at their joint fence, and _ in a moment Weston had blurted out his offer of the farmlet at any old price. " You want more land," he said forcefully, " You can have mine and tack it on to yours, and you can havo it straight away." With elbows resting on a post the sturdy farmer glanced humourously at an ominous face. "All over a bit of thistledown!" lie mused. " You can have it for a hundred pounds," Weston offered, " I'm sick of MacFaynes." " Why don't you set to an' clean them up, man ?" "Clean them up?" Weston ejaculated. " Yon thistles," Joey replied. As he spoke a breeze blew a shower of little golden parachutes picturesquely on to Andrew's land—a myriad seed bearers precious in Nature's sight, but for all that classified as obnoxious weeds by the twinkle in Joey's eyes. "It is dirt cheap," Weston > put in. " Which isn't cheap dirt—necessarily," Joey added for the other's frown. " Well, if you are determined to get rid of the place, I'll take it." So the bargain was closed, and for that' modest sum Gordon became proprietor of the farmlet Arthur Weston had come to a few years back rather more cheerfully than lie was now leav-

ing. Just before dawn one morning Weston packed a few belongings into the same wheezy car that had originally brought him over the Mangurawhiro hills; the rest of his stuff passing to Gordon —waJk in walk out. A kick on the wharc door in that hushed hour slammed it to. He was off! Not knowing how hard put to it Andrew MacFayne was to make both ends meet, and "not allowing for a thousand hasty words swallowed before at last hinting at, cleaning up of that wee bit of land, Weston felt the prick of every thistle in a last vicious glance at the dimly-seen array of heads. He left with the firm conviction that Andrew had come to iuh in the salt Mary had already applied, and ho left in a temper. Already the light was strengthening as tho departing car came slowly up the rise past the MaeFaync's house and a silent figure of a girl afc a gate woke into life. Then Mary came nervously into the roadway as if to stop tho car. "Arthur!" sho said in distress, "You are not going?" and with self-reproach in her eyes held out a pleading hand. " I did not mean half I said. I wasn't thinking." He stopped the car, his face as hard as tho boulders strewing the gorge below. " I've thought, though," he said savagely, " And I'll show you if you can play with

me." In the silence that fell, in that dim light they seemed to have the world to themselves. Then came the first twittering notes of a thrush taken up instantly by a hundred pulsing, throbbing throats, so the dark tawa trees became alive with a passionate appeal for light. And as if by magic the sun's rosy rim came peeping over tho ranges. Earth's overlord, but with poor power to tinge the two faces caught, in its glow with kindlier touch, alas! Bending forward Weston angrily let in his clutch and. hearing only a discordant clamour of birds, drove obstinately on. The chorus ceased; the sun rose higher, and tho girl turned silently away. She only was thero to help her father on their exacting farm, yes the day's work must go on. With a sigh, Mary went to drive the cows into the bails. Meanwhile Arthur Weston was pounding blindly downhill on the far side, of the crest when there came a sudden tilting of the car and, as he realised too late that he was over the edije. a bounding, bumping, crashing down the rough slope of the gorge. Then with a final somersault and a lurch the car fetched up against a large boulder, with wheels idly in the air. After a while Weston crawled out from a wrecked car, bruised and dazed, within a foot of a stream swollen by a recent cloud-burst. "It had been a near thing!" As ho stood stupidly up the startled cry of a shining cuckoo came irritatingly. "It was about to migrate to other lands, like himself, but it would return to be welcomed!" So, stooping with a frown, lie picked up a stone to hurl at it, but, the bird flew mockingly away. Still with the stone in his_ hand the disgruntled man turned to his wrecked car. "On their land ! Well, it could lie there," he said to himself, with soulsatisfaction in tho thought that the sight might alarm tho girl who ho considered had driven him forth. Then, about to pitch tho stone away, Weston found something to stare at instead; and not only at the fragment in liis hand but at tho rock it bad been broken off, also. Hero was the, fresh scar where tho rock had held his car up, saving him from almost certain drowning in that rushing current, too! He examined tho boulder closely and others at hand like it, finding around him signs of some upheaval of a lower strata of rock—signs of import. " What a find !" Now his thoughts towards the bird he had been going to throw the stone at changed quickly. This pipiwharauroa had surely directed him as it had the oldtime Maoris to a land of promise. " But it was not his property!" Thinking deeply over the problem fate had set him, Arthur Weston spent some time that morning in the lonely gorge, unseen and unheard, prospecting its possibilites as an Aladdin's cave. And what had given him the " Open Sesame " was that little knowledge which was a dangerous thing for others to jeer at, picked up while wasting time, messing about, they said. " A dreamer, eh ?" he said to himself harshly. "Wait till I wake them up!" But it would want careful thinking out and then, perhaps, he would " clean them up" all right. "By Jingo!" he said, making a bundle of a few necessaries from strewn parcels and shouldering it with confident, bleeding hands. " Who's the fool now ?" On which exultant thought Arthur Weston hobbled furtively away.

A NEW ZEALAND STORY.

(COPYRIGHT.)

It was some weeks after the departure of Hambledon's drone when the wrecked car was discovered, and by the very girl had hoped it would scare. It did, indeed, though Mary's alarm was quickly allayed by news that her impossibly suitor had been seen on the day after their parting, making in the direction of the coast.

In timo most people forgot Arthur Weston, and probably only sho had silently wished him good luck; but though Mary sol tied down courageously to her toiling she found herself fretting, feeling she might liavo tried to make more of him, and win tho best out of Arthur for his own sake. Then there came sleepless nights for her and peculiar sounds as of faint tappings which filled the sensitive girl with ideas about death-watch beetles and silly superstitions—all connected with this hotheaded young man now gono beyond recall.

At last, opening her window one night, she looked curiously out, fancying the noises came from somewhere outside. At first sho heard the mysterious tappings faintly, as before, but soon they ceased, and telling herself that it was l'io night birds pecking at tree trunks .sue got back to bed. After that night, Mary heard no more disturbing noises and dismissed them from her mind, finding far more to worry her now in her father's failing health. Over Andrew MacFayne's head hung a very sword by a hair, in his pressing liabilities; yet he worked his doublo shifts with unfailing cheerfulness. The factory cheques still came, thank God, and he would tell his daughter that each remittance was another nail in the coffin of despair; though certainly the money had to be disbursed almost immediately. But, dear oh dear, his luck was clean out! Now influenza gripped the hands that longed to bo at the milking by the side of his willing mate, and the aftermath was worse. The doctor absolutely insisted on his taking a complete rest.. "A complete rest!" Andrew mused. Plain as a pikestaff, for all the volunteering of willing neighbours, there was only one way, heavily in debt as he was, and lie turned to his daughter with it. " Matey," he said soberly, " I shall have to sell out." With tense face Mary heard her father, bowed her head to fate and yet again raised it to comfort him. " Besides," sho added, " we can take another farm afterwards, a smaller one, father, for you; and this is such poor land. Everything happens for the best." Hoping so with all his heart, Andrew put his property in an agent's hands for sale as soon as possible; and, considering the times, there was room for doubt how soon that might be. Yet the unexpected happened, for hardly had the farm been advertised for sale than a prospective buyer cropped up, for now Mr. Willey wrote to tell them to be expecting a visit from this man—whose name the letter did not mention. Not that that mattered. Here- was the chance —and now was he glad? Andrew hardly knew. So it happened that one afternoon father and daughter, sitting a little silently and sadly in their kitchen, heard the sound of a car approaching on the road outsido, heard its stopping at their gate, and now a man's tread on the path. Then Mary rose to open the door to a business-like knocking, while her father sat very still with a gripping at his heart. He heard the opening of the front door and a voico he recognised with surprise as Arthur Weston's.

" You did not expect me?" Mary's reply was inaudible. She was bringing Weston in, and Andrew got up wondoringly with a question for his unexpected visitor. "bo you have come back '!" " Oh, I have been back here before, Mr. MacFayne," was the easy reply as the young man- took the chair placed for hirri by tiie girl to whose smiles he was now a stranger. Nor did he smile. " Do you know what I heard as I came along?" ho asked, laying on the table, as be spoke, a small fragment of rock by tho side of a bowl of violets—the spring emblem a woman's love demanded. Not till after a short, strained silence did Andrew's voice come : " That we were selling up." "I knew that already; Willey sent me on here. I heard," said Weston, touching the piece of rock," something that recalled the day I found this. The shining cuckoo." Strange talk this seemed to MacFayne staring dully at the stone, while Mary sat downcast and dumb. Then, with a confession to make, Arthur Weston sparred with his conscience before beginning: " It is peculiar how fate works. That day I left Hambledon I had only one wish, to turn the tables on you all." He leaned forward intently, " 1 pictured myself returning some day rich, a somebody. . to turn you out. By accident I had picked up this piece of broken rock— I thought I had been spurred enough but it was as nothing to this. It was broken off a boulder when my car crashed in your gulley, and I liavo kept it ever sinco as my mascot, my only thought to j make money and buy "this farm for myself."

As neither listener spoke, Weston continued ; " J opened ;i store in Westland, and I have been lucky. My chance came sooner than I had expected; your place was advertised for sale, and I had tho cash required. Now—!" he leaned forward again, holding out the fragment of rock to MacFayne. "Do you see those little dull specks?" ho asked. " Not. one in a hundred would recognise them. Do you know what they arc'!" " I don't," the farmer replied wearily. "Gold." With a start Mary looked up, but avoiding her eyes Weston said a little harshly, " Had you known it, Mr. MacFayne, you had enough idle money lying in your gully to clear off all your debts over and again. 1 know, because I had taken samples of this cement for myself, of a night, before 1 quite left yen." So those were tho tappings she had heard? In that, despairing moment Mary's voice came for her father: "You have bought the farm?" Weston's tone changed, " No," he replied, " Oh, no. Though I could easily have done so." With a friendly gesture he left his chair to go to tho girl's side. " I had thought a lot, Mary, since wo parted that day at your gate, yet never so clearly as when T passed it again just now. Then all my resolutions failed. I felt ashamed." And turning his look to Andrew, ho said in a voice moved by its own softening, " I have not enough' money to buy you out. . . now that I have told you all.' Tho young man held out his hand as if about to leave them; and then, as it had come to him in the breaking of dawn those long days ago, Mary's voico asked in pain: "You arc not going?" llow differently ho looked at her now. " Why did 1 ever go?" Arthur Weston said, closer still to her. " Because I loved you, Mary. A blind love it was." Words that sent Andrew MacFayne unobtrusively from the kitchen. Tier fingers had locked themselves in his, her piloously pale face was raised to iiis; and now a'setting sun camo tinging both—and with the girl's cheeks so sadly in need of all that kindly colouring, Arthur Weston felt their full appeal. " I asked you a question once," he said earnestly. " Now I ask it again, dear, and you are going to say " Yes " this time ? Not for this luck that has come; not for money." The sunlight passed softly off her face, yet leaving it very beautiful to him; her clasp of his hand was so loving, and tears were in her eyes. Ah! she was saying that now. Bending his head over her he asked deeply: " Why have you fretted yourself away all this time? Like me von did not realise how much you loved. Is that it, darling? Is that why the roses have left these poor, sweet cheeks ?" He kissed them tenderly, and tear-fillet! gladdened eyes made answer, " Ah, why ?"