ANOTHER SPRING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22344, 15 February 1936, Page 21

ANOTHER SPRING

BY E. MARY GURNET

4 It was the rimu and the gorse betyond the littles creek that made Tat IjEccles' heart, sing. . The gorse flamed, and the delicate, feathery foliage of the riinus wept Mown to it, beautiful past telling. The 'golden summer air was drunk with !the scent of gorse, and the divine stillIness of . the hills was enhanced by the muted song of the creek that slipped •away in flashes of silver, through flax and cress and raupo, away to the sea. %Rom the heart of the gorse a quail • get up its wistful crying. From the long of 'the bill that lifted away be:yond Gordon's whare, a lark went up singing, sing. . . j'* Gordon's voice, a little gruff with emotion, blurred out colour and song, jr "Pat," he asked urgently. "Do you like it? Really like it:-'" ! : She looked up at him without seeing him, her eyes blinded by the riot ,&>f colour, the unending glory of the Mills that went out under the sun. 'The hazy glory of them that had neither ' beginning nor end, but died, blue on blue, on horizons faery far. "Past words," she said, and did not gee the light that leaped to his rugged face, the impulsive step he took towards her, but stood on, drunk with a slim, straight figuro in her " hunting kit, that, somehow, looked incongruous in that wilderness. With his gaze that was filled with unconscious hunger, fixed on the Swift, dark beauty of her face, he thought of her as he had first seen her, flying a hedge on her mettlesome hunter; and • he remembered that he had felt then as he felt now, awkward and uncouth; ;a nd was filled with a sense of amazement that she should be here with him on his holding, at the back of beyond. Vaguely he was aware that it had been rather decent of Gwen Bond to ''write to her, asking her to stay at their farm, five miles away; but then Gwen was decent. A great pal, Gwen. . Her people had been frightfully decent, -to him ever since he had taken up £the holding behind theirs. . . . They had been deeply interested in Pat—had let him talk of her —listened to little extracts from the letters she wrote to him from her home in Auckland. Had jtgreeil that she had been more than Jgkind to him during his brief stay in "the citv. She had ridden with him quite jfa lot on his two outings with the Hunt. • Had danced several times with him Sat the Hunt ball. • i And now, through Gwen's kindness, 6 he was here, in her face the reflected .glow of the gorse—the golden glory J?of the day. I He stood above her, overcome with a leurious helplessness in face of her • •'gsilence, her preoccupation with the •poveliness that he lived with and took <for granted. • 1 So withdrawn she seemed, so utterly t» remote from h\m. S? Yet, had he but known it, he was m 2 the girl's mind, one with' the mellow .- peace of the earth. At the moment, though she seemed unconscious of him, in her subconscious mind she knew just ■how he looked as he stood above her; S r strong and calm, and a little shy, but Snot boorish. A man of whom a woman could be proud. On whom she could rely land, life being a complicated business, it' would be good to have a ;tman 'on whom one could relv. /•JgKot that she loved him. Not yet; put she could. She would, when the time was ripe, which was not vet. Men were ■tsuch weathercock things, given over to g moods and vapours; needing always, 2humouring—coaxing out of their uni* reasoning jealousies —but Gordon Mans- '• field, she thought, would not be like if that. He had a placidity, a serenity and lan assurance that was devoid of any "if. hint of smugness or conceit. • $ Xat -conscious that she thought of ! him, she looked up again and smiled. I For Gordon Mansfield the world % 6tood still. Gwen Bond came out of the whare, :■ with laughter in eyes that were blue as the brassv summer skies. 1 "If you've finished mooning! said "IGwen, in her voice that held the lilt • 'of little winds; "The tea is made!" 1 They looked up at her, the man fmoody because his moment was snatched away, the girl serene and friendly bei cause, for her, the moment was not ye Sbe said: "You're a picture, Gwen! J p!And the setting was made for you. ''" Backblocks lady!" said Gwen, and laughed. Her man's shirt was faded with much washing. There was a hole |in the knee of her breeches, and her boots were worn past redemption. The ' dusky copper of her hair was shaggy, : iiand, beside her visitor she felt large, ■%coarse, almost, and awkward; yet, as she waited for them to come up the - •§hill, she felt no animosity. Merely over her frank fac« a little cloud went fleet- • fling, as a summer cloud across the face fof the sun. # Pat stood beside her in > the doorway, taller than she, yet not nearly •:§her weight. f »''You said that derisively! she acffcused. "But I shouldn't! 1 should say it proudly! Feeling all golden and green and blue! Spacious and clean, hue j|wind—like earth —like the skyl The j. coolness of dusk, and the splendour of J?the morning! Sim-washed and ffindLaughter left her last words, ana she I turned to look again on the valley I .with love, with reverence. '%■ She said: "The light on the gorse 'find the water 1 And the green of the f rimus! When I am in England, I shall s'.weep for it!" ;| Gordon put down the cup that was | half-wav to his lips, and there was ? silence in the whare. i -."ln England?" His voice cracked a l little, and he flushed, unable to meet I the candour of her eyes. Gwen got up to put fresh water in • the teapot; but from the stove she I glanced keenly from the woman to tli£ | ijan. There was a question in her eyes; a look that was blended of sorrow and anger. £ .Pat said: "In' England!" Her voice 'leaped a little, and she looked at Gordon again without seeing him. "Think iof it! England! Little crooked lanes |find hamlets! Great towns and cathedrals, . . . Shall ! come back, I wonder?" a No one answerod. %■; The man looked from the woman's dark face, out of the ,door to the sun ran out, dripping gold |ion a world that not even his sudden |terrible sense of bereavement could darken. | He said at last: "You'll come again? jpjefore you sail?" '§ jfhe nodded. "1 "But surely; if Gwen will have me!" I 'iGwen, still standing by the stove |Wh the teapot in her hands, did not tlook up. will be a pleasure," she said, fqmatly. .1 "As they rod 6 out of the valley, the |*Uh touched the rim of the western ■dulls. The quail called sorrowfully, but 'l* thrush, high up in one of the rimus, tjEiocked him with liquid crying. . . .' Mid. . . gold. . . gold. . .' " On the top of the hill, Pat stopped ■s tad drew a drop breath. I? 'I shall coiiie back!" she' said, and oer voice held a certainty that lifted jthe man's heart, so that he forgot the jjflri who rode at his left hand. ] |! 'And I shall live for your return." ! . "hroutih the dusk, Pat Eccles glanced him sharply. That," she assured him, "would be | folly!" "Divine folly!"' I j | Given Bond set spurs to her horse and . ;*GHt away over the hills. Through the jflusk Pat Eccles followed her. On the IljVttle winds of evening their laughter |*as borne back to the chagrined man. stood below the whare, the man wownmgly uncertain, the girl poker-

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faced, but with her chin set at a determined angle. "I think you're being foolish, Gordon. Helmsworth is a good neighbour, and it hardly seems fair to leave that patch of gorse to keep spreading to his pasture; and you promised him the rimu in return for clearing it." The man did not- answer and a long silence came between them; and then Gwen Bond moved over to his side and laid her hand on his arm. "Gordon, 1 know .what you're thinking; that Pat loved it, and that it will hurt her if you clear it; but believe me, she is a sensible, practical girl. She knows tlio true value of things; and, after all, it was not only the valley. She adored it all . . . and she'll have all this. ..." She gestured away over the hills. "You—you've got your way to make, Gordon. It would cost you considerably more than what you'd get for the rimu to clear that section; and Pat —she's used to things . . . nice tilings . . . you can't ask her to—live in a whare. ..." lie said, heavily:

"I suppose you're right," and moved from the touch of her hand. "We'll go. I'll ride round to Helmsworth's . . . If it's got to be done, it had better be done soon. . .

"Before Pat comes again?" Her eyes were brooding on his face, and there was a new look in them; mingling with that look of sorrowful anger a stubborn determination. "Gordon, is that wise?" He said, in sudden anger:

"Listen, Gwen! So far there is nothing between mo and Pat Eccles! If there should be, it will be above and beyond a patch of gorse I You are impertinent !" Ho turned away abruptly, going along the hill toward the little tin shed that housed his harness and implements, but the girl stood on, biting her lips to still their trembling, but her eyes were like blue fire. "From him —to me!" she thought, with a fury that left her physically sick. "From him, to me, after all I've done for him! Men!" But when sho joined him after he had saddled his horse, she was quiet and cool, and a little distant. "I'm sorry, Gordon; but wo had been such good friends that I did not realise that I was —presuming." He answered abruptly: "Forget it!" and thev rodo in silence to the fork of the roads.

Three days later Helmsworth's gang cleared out the patch of gorse. They did it with flame-throwers, and by night the gold of the morning was nothing more than a mass of charred debris from which the acrid green fire smoke hung like a sick mist in the valley. In the morning the lumber-jacks went in, and before the week was out there was not a rimu left standing. Gordon Mansfield, standing in his whare door, to watch the day break, thought passionately, "I was happy until 1 met her. . . I wonder if they'd like to dam the creek!"

When he came back in the evening, someone had cut two clumps of flax directly opposite the door, and there was a telegram from Pat. "Coming to-night. Gwen is meeting me."

Brooding still, he tore tl'4» telegram to fragments, and went out again to catch his horse. When he came back in the evening it was in his mind to the exclusion of all else, he could not bring himself to tell Pat of the destruction of the valley.

They came over early, she and Gwen, and never, through all his life, did he forget her face as she greeted him. It was as though "life had gone from it. Her hand in his was limp instead of cool and firm, and her eyes, meeting his once, were distant and impersonal. But she did not speak of it. She said: "I did not tell you yesterday, but this is only a flying visit. I am sailing by an earlier boat. . . ."

Gwen glanced at her sharply, and left them alone together. When she came back she saw that from the man, too, something, some sweetness of youth, was gone.

Gwen Mansfield looked up as her husband came in, and spoke with the tartness that was growing on her. "Gordon! You've been buying trees again! And 1 the mortgage due next month! Sometimes I think you must be mad!"

Mansfield looked at her sombrely, with dim speculation. Though his hair was grej-ing, his eyes were still clear and deceptively youthful, but the years that had separated him from Pat Eccles had not dealt so kindly with his wife. Her eyes were faded, and less sorrowful than angry. Her figure had spread so that she was dumpy and inclined to stoutness, and the downrightness that had seemed so admirable in her youth had degenerated into a fondness for unnecessarily plain speaking. The lilt was gone from her voice, the lightness from her step, and she was, and was conscious of the fact, nothing more than that "backblocks lady" of whom she had spoken derisively to Pat Eccles years since. . And it was Pnt, she thought bitterly, who had made her so —taken the heart out of her; because they had not been a year married before she knew the truth: that, though Gordon had apparently dismissed the other girl from his mind, yet never would he forget her. The bride of a year, Gwen knew, indubitably, that, though she had won, and got Gordon Mansfield for her man, vet never would she hold his heart. She had won him with treachery, and he, not 'realising it, had married her out of pique, because she was to his hand. So the years warped her, soured her, and with'their passing her hatred of her long-gone rival increased. If she could not have told in other ways, there was the valley. For til a first year of their marriage Gordon had gone about silent and sombre, and most unloverlike, tor which Gwen had hated him in a silence that broke in violent recrimination and accusation: truth handled like a scourge, that, unaccountably, brought the light back into his eyes, the spring to his step. He said: "You're right, Gwen. We re out in the open now. I never should have married you. There'll never be anyone for me but Pat; and I don't even know where she is, whether she caino back from England. ... If you want to leave me, I'll give you your freedom; but I'm through with pretending. If you ohooso to stay, I'll bo good to you; but it's Pat I love. ..." But Gwen, broken and defeated, elected to stay If there was no one for him but Pat, for her was no one but him. It was after that he began to plant the hillside, across the creek. At first ho had been satisfied to filch trees — wattle and rimu—from the bush in the reserve at the back of their holding, but as the years that saw them growing passed he began, too, to buy; expensive trees, exotic trees, so that all the season round the valley began to flame and glow. Poplars, bi-rcjliea, beeches, weeping willows, accacias, Canadian sumac, copper beeches, began to flourish among the banks of wattle, red gum, pohutukawa and flowering trees and shrubs; but it was the wattle, in the early springtime, flaming along the banks, that filled his heart with pride. In the morning and the evenings, he would stand in the sun, looking down on it with old-young eyes, and thinking, "If she could see this, she would forgive m« , * ,

And, ten years later, in the spring time, Pat Eccles came back. A tail woman, more thin than slim, and a little sallow; but because he saw her through a lover's eyes, Gordon Mansfield did not know it. He worshipped her with a shyness that, charming in the boy, was ludicrous in the man. She stayed with them in the little bungalow that Gwen, neglecting her own person, kept so spotless; and she and Gwen talked far into the night, forgetting him, who listened avidly, not to the things that she said, but to the cadences of her voice. But onoe something she said spoke to him, bringing him back from the past. She said. "So, after all, you're the backblocks lady!" And she said it not unkindly, but a little derisively. Gwen flushed, seeing herself for the first time, as sho was; dumpy and untidy and uncomely. Pat went on in her light, easy voice, "You've got stout, Gwen! There's no blinking it; but you needn't be you know! Not in these enlightened days!" Gwen said defensively, "1 haven't worried. Why on earth should 1?" Pat laughed a little shrilly. "It must be wonderful . to be so sure of vvour man!" And she did not tell them that she, who was still slim and young-looking, had lost her man. In the morning she saw the valley. And the youth that she still claimed, and had lost came back, fleetingly, to her eyes. She said to Gordon, forgetting Gwen, "What fools we are. And blind! I thought, once, that you cared so little for beauty . . . that you would not be . . . what I had dreamed you were ..." Their hands touched, clasped, and she flushed; but in his blood no warmth stirred. He thought with sudden terror, "I and old. 1 have forgotten love!" Neither of them noticed the other woman steal away. They did not know until at mid-day they rode in from the hills that she had gone. Gordon found her note on the dressing table; a pitiful little note, smudged with tears. "... when I made you burn the valley, I thought that I had won, but I know now, that the first time you saw Pat, I lost you ... if one can lose what one never had. But I loved you so I thought that if we were married, I could teach you to care . . . forgive me, Gordon . . . I'll give you your freedom somehow . . . and don't let Pat think too hardly of me . . ." Because he was stunned, he showed the note to Pat, who looked at him a little blankly, and said: "But, Gordon, I'm married." But sho did not tell him that her husband had deserted her, and paid her more in alimony than he would be able to give her in a lifetime. She turned and looked into the valley that was a riot of gold. And here and there the baby rimus lifted their fragile, lovely heads to weep in the riot ol sun. "What you burned, when you burned the valley." All the gentle selflessness that is born of beauty. Alone in the dark, he waited in the valley. In "the morning, he wrote to Gwen. He wrote very candidly, because, between them, candour had always been. "1 do not think that I love you, or that I ever shall; but I do know that my love for Pat is a dream that is dead ... a loveliness that has faded. And I shall never know love —as youth knows it . . . and 1 have cheated you out of it; but if you care to come back, perhaps we can yet find happiness of a sort together . . . unless .you, too, have discovered that your love for me is a dream that has passed ..." There was a silence then that lasted until the gold of the wattle was no more; and then Gwen came back. She came unheralded on the service car; a slim Gwen, with the remnants of youth lighting her eyes. A well-dressed, wellgroomed Gwen, who had poise and assurance. Meeting him, she said very coolly, "1 cheated, Gordon, llobbed you of young love. Do you really want me back ? He studied her with a quiet speculation, before replying. "L want you to do as you wish, Gwen." She turned and looked down into the valley, and her voice was hushed as she answered, "The gold is gone, Gordon. The gold of youth; but perhaps there will be a glorious sunset ..." A man came over the hill with a suitcase and a parcel in his arms. Gordon took them from him, and looked at the parcel for some seconds before he realised what it contained. Then he looked at his wife. Behind her, the sunset flamed red and gold, green and grey and primrose. Meeting his eyes, some of its colour seemed to be reflected in her face. "It's a new kind of wattle," she said, a trifle breathlessly. "I thought, maybe ..." On his face, too, the glory of the sunset glowed. He laughed queerly, a sound that caught in his' throat. Held out his hand with a little gesture -that made her heart beat to suffocation. "Oh, my dear!" said Gordon Mans-, field, and swung her round so that they faced the valley. "There'll be another spring!" he said softly. "Come down and plant our tree!"