The White Wings of Azrael:

Otago Witness, Issue 2493, 25 December 1901, Page 3 (Supplement)

The White Wings of Azrael:

By JESSIE MACKAY.

Specially written for the Ota R o Dail> Times and Witness Christmas Annual of 1901.

. .* CH AI'TKR I lMBBI^illlliBB8fl»ll twentieth birthday is such an important event, somehow; a nintteenth wouldn't ha.ye mattered so much. Why couldn't this crazy tub huny herself, and let me have it in the Land of Promise with H.aiy and Marion? Instead of that I keep it impatiently and in steiet, amid odours of pea soup -md the boiling of salt beef. If the ship - pet poodle, Mr Horatio Butterleigh, were to hear of it, I am sine he would arrange some feaisome saloon diversion in my honour, — stand balanced on a wineglass, like a lanky Mercury ; m conjure sausages out of the captain's pocket, to my utter confusion as the cause of the uproar. Or worse, he might fall into a moon-struck fit of sentiment, and, other gifts not being avadlable, offer me the .sun-faded bit <it softgoods he calls his heart. One never knows what to expect fiom a cross between a circus clown and a lady-killer. Mr Butterleigh amused me the first week or two of the voyage ; but lam too eager for Ljttelton and Marion to be amusable now. Moreover, the neaier we approach this neu .md fie^h ami living Land of Promise, I get the angrier w.th a man who owns no pait of himself, — who got his trick* from a conjurer, his graces from an actor, his speeches from the Young Lady's Journal, and his opinions from bis grandfather (who previously got them out of the Ark) How strange that Marion, too, wa,s just twenty when she sailed to Austiaha as a governess fifteen years ago ! Hard day* the>e were for Marion and the rest of us. Then she married Harry Netheiby. and the hard days ended for - „ . J her, while, strangely again, they ended for us the same yeai. But for all v , V-_ f^the money that came to us at last, mine has been a hungry little life, _-•> j €^T -*/ „-,-v, tossed a*v)ut like a ball as I have been, from aunt to cousin, from / N ~>^ cousin to s:stei-in-laAV. True, I've seen a little of the world, . _ <' v ' ± /' but 1 found it such a big, hollow , noisy barn of a place ; .inrl now I want so badly to get warm m some gutud silence and begin to live. Marion writes of the great hills ; there w ill be sun and silence and life out there with her. Marion has always been my ideal ;my romance. Do I really remembei In or have I only dreamed of her Olympian stal lire and grace? Will the unknown brother Hariv be more to me than my own brothers have been ': Tom and his bride did make room for me in their dovecot — ostentatious room. But I couldn't be grateful enough for my mercies, and left them. Charlie did not even profess a thought apart from his betrothed. j " Land ho !" 0 bare, bronze hills in the sunset ! What have you got for me? I have been so radiantly happy this first night in New Zealand ! Marion is all 1 fancied, and more. Rightly had 1 remembered the thick coils of bronze, the swan-like neck, the nobl carriage. She is like Hera the Queen, only the eyes are the eyes of Pallas, with the shadow of great wisdom in them — a shadow like the reflection of mighty rocks in a, deep water. Harry is charming, — dark, lithe, slender, black-eyed, and oh, so kind. They were both on the little pier. Marion took me in her arms — my head scarcely reaches her chin — and cooed over me. "Ailsa, my baby, I have wanted you so long !" Harry hung back like a nervous schoolboy till I said : "Aren't you going to speak to your little sister?" And, really, I was not prepared for the cordial bear's hug that followed. Soon we were at dinner in the Mitre Hote 1 ., and I had never felt so important in mv life before. Harry gradually garthered everything in a semicircle round mv plate ; Marion never took her eyes off me. "How dark the Baby's hair has got; but it still curls, she said, taking a piece on her finger. "Why don't you eat, Baby?" ''Dear people, lam doing what I can. There's only one of me to eat; there are two of you to ask questions." "Then mum's the word till dinner is over," said HaTry. Then we went out on the hill, overlooking the softly lapping water. Such a queer little town, just as if some one had thrown a giant's handful of Noah's Arks against the hills, and they had stuck there. Nature has just two colours —brown of the mountains, blue of the sea. I held a hand of each, and raced them along like two children. It *s so good to be petted ; alas ! I had so little petting in childhood. Marion looked thoughtful when we parted for the night. "Twenty yesterday! Oh! I'm so sorry! I wanted to keep you a long time yet."

" I'm not asking to go, Marion." •' No, but man proposes and woman accepts. A girl is like a white blackbird out back at (iran-

ton. Good-night, my Baby." I like the name ; yet it saddens me, too, for it makes me think of the little lonely Australian grave -where Marion's own and only baby lies. So good a day, so fair a night, and yet — one little cloud. So transient, of course ; I will neither write nor think of it. Farewell to Chri^tchurch and civiisation! I have watched Marion do year's shopping in nn afternoon ; u ~ve I not said that Marion is a goddess? " But what do you do about tuckers and bootlaces? " I asked piteously. "How can you tell how often your shoestrings will break, or how much of your lace the cow will chew off the hedge?" " Haven't I fingers to stitch up a calico collar that would give any cow dyspepsia to look at? Ae> to bootlaces, if they give out, there is a riverbed of flnx at Granton that will last my time and yours," gravely answered Marion, in that calm, carrying voice of hers. And immediately one of Strange's young men dived nis head into si box of buttons like a duck after a fly. "We saw ai 1 the lions, chief of them being the mournfuJ cromlech of stones th at marks the site of the cathedral that is to be. But I want to see, not civilisation in the bud, but savagery in th« flower. And, O ye gods! I have got it in this caravansary, which they call an accommodation house ; but of that more anon. As we left town behind, Harry pointed out a house on the road. "Tha,t's the Plough Inn. Did you ever hear of w place called the Last Sigh of the Moor, Ailie?" "Of course. It's a pass in Spain, where the last Moorish King stood and wept over his lost Granada." " Yes ; 1 knew it was an ancient yarn about a nigger and a hill. Well, Stormont call* the Plough the Last Sigh of the Bullockdriver, where he sees the last of Christchuich, and weeps over his lost cheque." Culture isn't dead at Granton, then ; it lives in this Mr Stormont, the partner whom Harry quotes so often, but Marion never. All the long day on the trackless yellow plain, the wonderful dream-line of the crested Alps has been draw ing me like a magnet. Now I am near the primeval, the everlasting. And even this sea of dead, yellow tussock changes, when the wind blows over it, into something like the rushing of a million living things. Lunch was divine ; we had it by a «leepy little creek in full view of the mountains. But what shall I say of tea in this caravansaiy? Cold meat was on the table , — but I draw a veil over that. The bread

was sad within and funereal without. The buttei Mas made an 1 buried by the landing Pilgrims, as I imagine, and le.Mniectul tm our benefit. Theie were two preserves; the tiist \\a^ a ■ mass of fermented crystals, on which the spoon rang : the othei comprised a few lonely stand-offish gooseberries floating mutow fully m a thin and doubtful syrup. And the tea, — if I had wa-lied im ■ hands in it, they would have turned the colour of a Mala>'v Manou took me out and stayed me with biscuits, bought for a !abuloii» Mini in Dalgety's yesterday. i Gra»nton at last, and aching bones! On leaving the caiavan 1 - n\ : this morning we had to mount an awful car of Juggernaut called a i bullock dray. Twelvp bullocks draw it, yoked two-and two : it 1- | made mainly of spaces and slabs and iron, and goes straight on i

over bushes and boulders., with awful thuds that loosen every tooth and rack every joint. The man who drives it has a whip about ten yards long, and sits on the tpole. "You needn't put cotton wool in your ears, Ailie," said Harry, as I doubtfully surveyed this shaggy charioteer. " Dan's language is sultry in the vernacular ; but he has one great gift — he knows Maori, and swears in that before ladies. There's only one hell in English ; there are ten of 'em in Maori theology, Stormont says. That ought to give a man some scope. But the bullocks don't rise to it so well somehow, Dan says." I looked at Marion's marble profile, that has caught the Alpine other-worldliness from the great mountains of her life's pilgrimage. No man will swear in Maori or any other tongue before her, I think. We stopped at Corrie for lunch about mid-day. Corrie is the nearest station to Granton ; the homesteads are only about fifteen miles apart. It is owned by a ihomely old Scotchman called Andrew Murray : everybody seems to call him Old Andrew, though he is a big squatter. While we descended from the dray as gracefully- as we could, with the help of Harry and a soap box, a tremendous babel was going on in a curious labyrinth of posts and rails and little gates, which they call the sheepyards. Something like a dozen men, twenty dogs, and a thousand sheep seemed all fighting for dear life in a thick, malodorous cloud of yellow dust. The men yelled, the dogs barked, the sheep bleated ; yes, it was Pandemonium on a Saturday night. After a long look or two I began to discern two leaders in the fray : one a short mam, with a long, reddish-grey beard ; the other a hideous giant, with a face as fiery as a harvest moon, a voice like a torrent in flood, and an awful hat with something white flapping on it. Those two sons of savagery had fallen out, it seemed ; and as they were many pens apart in the maze, the strife had hushed at little to let them have it out. " Andrew Murray, have you ten fingers on you?" roared the giant, who was working an odd sort of swinging gate that sent sheep two ways at once. " Na ; twae are thoombs," replied the short man, with great deliberation. " The jolly lot are ' thoombs ' when it comes to counting. You've not counted that black-faced sheep." " Let me tell ye I counted black-faced sheep before ye were born, gin they be ony harder to count than "white yins." "Andrew Murray, you're a blundering, doddering, drivelling idiot !" "Ou ay ; they say that neebours get neebourlike. " This last calm retort drew from the giant a roar like the blast of escaping steam. I thought that murder would be done ; Marion's lips merely parted in a light, disdainful smile as we walked to the house. A sonsy girl, with chestnut hair, and round, golden freckles came to meet vs — Maggie Murray, Andrew's daughter. She took us in to smooth our tumbled hair ; then led us to rest in the shady, rough-boarded little verandah, facing the Alpine ridges. Upon our classic meditations there broke in a rude rabble, with coats flung over their arms, and hair on end with wind and dust. Foremost of these stalked the reddish man and the angry giant, still muttering " blackfaced sheep " at intervals. Then the joke of Marion's silence was manifest when she murmured in cool, distinct tones : "Mr Murray, Mr Stormont, my sister."

Ihi uMiit -tooprd ,i little J thought lit- •« ii*> giung I<> lliulk me unilu the chin, .md shuddered Instead ot th.it be made me a cmntl\ how. and -aid. in calm, good Kngli-h : "Little Mis- DnimitKind, you aie welcome to the ba< k lange 5 - I cnn!u— lie mti-t hi i gentleman, tin he ne\ei otieied In- un w.i-lied h. md \i Inle Mi Mm lay and two si,n- ot the -nil who weii' hiding hclinid Ha.n\ , dutifully locked their giea-\ finger- innnd our- with tite- that -eemed to front the gallow- Hut In 1- a (.\ilnne. and nothing; le— > : t\ cyclone that -end- evea\ '■tick and -tiaw ot oppn-ite opinion whirling — who know* wlieie' He diove Mi J Muiici\. le-- vahctnt liere than in the \ard-, into a silent attack on the mutton He Hath' and loudh contradicted Han\. He Hatteued outiight tin- two son- of the -oil, who. ievi\ing a little in a -liarh i oinei 1 emote from Marion and me. had ventured to j

hazird a couple 01 teeble opinions. Then, riding like a billow over wrecks, he told us a funny story about a sheep - stealer iand a judge and a Maori witness. When he mimicked the Maori one ;ould have sworn he had a large hot potato in his mouth ; we nearly died laughing. The Cyclone is civil to Marion only ; to Maggie lie is condescending ; me he does not notice at all This is savagery in the Bower, indeed, to live in the house with a whirling tornado. Some day le will discover I am not an indeterminate female nsect, and he will roar it me. Then something ierrible will happen, for [ won't, I won't, be roared at by any Cyclone with a red face ! And this is Granton — this queer little wooden louse set in the midst )f green -growing trees, md flanked by a young illage of outbuildings t,nd a mighty pile which s the "woolshed. Also, :enriels dotted everywhere over the scenery. Uso, a fat gipsy cob)ven under the trees, behind it all, the olemn purple glooms of hose wonderful Canter>ury Sierras. I can't ake it all in yet ; it's o wild and warm, so avage and comfortable. o above and beyond the old work-a-day world . When we were half through dinner, the Cyclone arrived. Having Eemingly forgotten about the "black-faced sheep, he merely called Harry numskull and a dunderhead in a sort of Borean pleasantry, and therwise dined in peace. Later in the evening he came in rathei xcited, threatening to cut an unfortunate called Long Jimmy into lusage meat for letting his horse out of the stable yard. Then he

guffaw ed over Punch for a uhile, — fancy dear oid Punch out here. — then he parsed it to Marion, finalh swooping down upon me '• Look at that, Missie. Did you ever see a better piciuie of that grinning thimble-rigger of an Israelite. Ben Uizz\ v Hut. thete, I Mippo^e \mi don't know him tmm a dancing mi^tei Poln c- ,iren t [, night <U young ladies' boriiding <=< hools " I gathfied all mv WltS and lx-iw-^ touelht'i . and .m^i-ii'd ' Oh. \es, I have seen him lint on that mia^ion he wd"- s cry ike <i diming master indeed, loj Ik had tluee tat old ioutitt\ Whigs lannng every time lie spoke." "Dance, did they? Couldn't the\ up agaitM the majesty if lu^ hair oil and his curling tong 1 - 1 * A pietty set ot Wing-, they iir to let Renjcimin knead them into unleavened c;ukes a^ he •* doing' "I don't think you've got a single political conviction. Stoimoiit, said Harry, mildly. "Last week you were la\ ing into the Whigs for all you were worth." "I merely sa>l that Lord What-d'you-call-h m 1* the '■on of an ass, and the longest -eared of an asinine gtneration reaching past the Pharaohs. And I drew it confoundedly mild when I said so. No, I hay? no political convictions to speak of One man is an angel with wingfeathers dropping treacle till he gets into the Treasury benches ; then the country lies down and groans till .t can't groan any more ; then it kicks him out and appoints another infallible creature of mol tsses to fill his place. Put every mother's son of the present lot under water for a year ; burn all the red tape, and let the country send over for a few straight patriots in moleskins to run the business without so much flutter and cackle. Then the country would learn to know a man when it sees it." Harry seemed to have heard this before, for he meiely murmured something irrelevantly about rising early to muster Flanagan's Gully. Unfortunately, this revived the Cyclone's grievance anent the lost horse, and Long Jimmy had a worse time than ever. When it was proposed to boil him like a< crab, Marion had pity on me, and carried me off to bed. "Where is your oubliette, Marion? And "where ia your donjon keep, where offending vassals are kept in irons? And Ido hope that the gallows oak isn't in front of my bedroom window, for I doubt it is never without a tassel." Marion laughed quietly. "Mr Stormont is quick at giving sentence, but he generally puts off the hanging till the gooseberry tree is

jrown Xow, Baby, dear, here is your little cot, knocked together jut of bush logs and covered with at downy raupo mattress tit for i queen. Why, the Baby is too sleepy to do its own hair, I do aelieve. Sit down, poor thing ! " It is so lovely to feel Marion's soft fingers straying lound my neck ; md she brushes with such a deft gentleness. I'm so hiippy, so happy, nid yet there is a shadow on Granton. Harry and Marion are

charming to all others, high and low . But why do they never speak to each other, never look at each other?