Heather of the South.

Otago Witness, Issue 3672, 29 July 1924, Page 58

Heather of the South.

By

ROSEMARY REES,

Author of “April’s Sowing.” CHAPTER lI—THE GIRL IN THE SPRING CART. Heather Burnside, jolting along the road in the old spring cart, passed the white painted, wooden building known as the Te Han pub; past the big bridge spanning the wide gorge of the river: past the dairy factory opposite to it; past the two roomed cottages, and Maori whares, gathered into a small native settlement; a.nd on along the right bank of the river, up tlm valley, on her way towards the little cottage which was now her home—was conscious enough of her anger seething within her. As a child she had been subject to these sudden storms of passion, when the tide of emotion, sweeping through her small frame, had seemed to overwhelm her; but her father Doctor Burnside, being both wise and patient, and loving his little daughter, if possible, more deeply TTu al n ‘ le ove d the two elder children, Phillip and Tom, had gradually taught her self-control. He was a man who realised long before such things became the common jargon of the half-baked psychologists, the dangers of repressions, and he soon found that beneficient providence—by dowering the little girl with one great talent—had mercifully provided an outlet for the too strong emotionalism of her nature. Almost from babyhood, music had been an absorbing interest to- her, and though there were no very talented teachers to be found in the little town of Wairiri, she was at least taught to play the piano sufficiently well to take full advantage of the more advanced lessons she received, when she left Wairiri for a hoarding school in Auckland. Only three months before the outbreak of the world war, Doctor Burnside had been drowned, while swimming his horse across a flooded river. He had never been known to disregard any urgent summons from the sick, or, injured, and it was in the eifort to reach a woman who was, lying dangerously ill in a small settler’s home, far out in the country, that he had lost his life. To Heather, who was then fifteen years of age, the memory of her father became as the memory of some saint. The child had an immense capacity for loving, and with this capacity existed, as it so often does, a great and jealous protective instinct for the loved ones and an almost fanatical hatred for those w r ho injured them. Tom, the second son, had alwavs called forth this mothering quality in Heather, • —whom he somewhat resembled m appearance, and in temperament—though lie was in fact, two years older than Ins sister. . In spite of the fact that Doctor Burnside had been anxious that his sons should adopt professional careers, they both early announced their intention of goino- on the land, and although this was something of a disappointment to their father, he was too wise a man to force them into any against their inclinations. Phihip had already been settled for three or four years at Weka Flat, and Tom had been with him for as many months, when their father died. There was nothing now to keep Mrs Burnside in Wairiri, and she decided to carry out her husband’s wishes with regard to Heather, and take her to Europe, to finish her education, and to studj' music. They had a certain small income and Mrs Burnside, who as a girl had stayed with friends in Paris, knew that Heather and she could live almost as cheaply there as in Wa-iriri. But when thev arrived in England, war had been declared, and they did not get to Paris until after the. Armistice. Both the Burnside boys had volunteered at once for active service. Phillip, to his bitter disappointment, was refused on account of some slight congenital malformation his right foot, but Tom—concealing the fact that he was not yet nieteen—was passed, and was in London for a week or two with his mother and sister before he proceeded to France. He was in hospital twice during the years that followed, but returned to Phillip and the farm at the termination of hostilities, looking bigger, browner, and in better health, than when he had left New Zealand. Mrs Burnside and Heather had not returned to the Dominion with Tom. It was onlv now that the long deferred visit to Paris could be paid, and it was their intention to remain some years in France. They had been there scarcely twelve months however, when Fate again intervened, and they were forced once more to change their plans. Things were not going too well with Phillip and Tom, and Mrs Burnside found that in order to prevent the possibility of the farm being taken over by the mortgagees, she must realise part of her capital, and for a time at any rate she and Heather must decide to make their home with the boys in the little cottage on the farm. Before they got hack to New Zealand however, one of those floods of misfortune, which seem at times to engulf a particular family or individual, had begun to sweep down upon them. Tom, involved in a racing scandal, had already

disappeared, leaving no clue to his whereabouts ; the slump was creating acute financial difficulties in which the Burnsides were soon involved; and the crowning blow came when Phillip contracted influenza, and died after two days illness. And it was due to Creed!—Creed— Creed! repeated Heather to herself. His name seemed to be beating in her ears with every jolt and rattle of the cart — with every thud of the old horse’s hoofs on the roadway. She had never seen him until this afternoon, but before Tom had been disqualified for life by the Racing Club, and had disappeared, he had written one letter to 1 iis sister, in which he spoke with intense bitterness of Creed. That was the last word she and her mother had heard of Tom. Stephen Creed was a false friend to Tom! and he had existed in Heather’s mind as the, vilest, and most despicable being, and the author of all the trouble that had come upon the Burnside family. Had it not been for Stephen Creed, this shame and disgrace would not now be attached to her brother Tom’s dear name; and had it not been for the money spent in endeavouring to prove Tom’s innocence, the worry and extra work entailed by his disappearance—work and anxiety which had worn out Phillip's strength—he, Phillip, would have been alive to-day. Her reasoning may not have had a very solid basis, but the fact remained that for more than a year she had held the image of Stephen Creed in her heart as worthy of the greatest hatred of which she was capable. Yet when she had seen him advancing down that lonely road towards her, no intuition warned her that here was the enemy upon whom the vials of her secret wrath and bitterness, had so often been poured. She had looked down at him with friendly laughter in her eyes; she had found some pleasure in his height, his poise, his tanned clean-shaved face with its humorous mouth, and clear hazel eyes; she had liked the sound of his voice! And then to find that this man with whom she had been laughing and talking, was the Stephen Creed whom above all men she loathed! As for Gillespie, though she was sometimes forced to speak to him on matters connected with station affairs, she made these interviews as short as possible, and, for the most part, ignored him. Had he had no association whatever with Creed, his personality would still have filled her with antipathy. She disliked his light, narnow eyes, set close together, his sandy hair and lashes ; and his thin face —shrewd and capable in its way —always made her think of -a lean, grey rat! But it was his connection with Greed that struck the deepest note of repugnance within her. She hated Creed, she hated his man servant, and his maid servant, and she was prepared to hate the stranger within his gates. For some time without being fully aware of it, she had been mechanically urging forward with her whip, the slow old horse in the shafts before her; as suddenly as the fury had seized her, so suddenly did contrition come upon her for having unwittingly made the poor old beast suffer for her anger against Creed. She pulled up to a walking pace, and at the same moment some memory of her father came upon her. How these passions of hers had wounded liftn—how patient he had always been! “Oh! but he would have understood this. He’d have hatred Stephen Creed as I hate him!” she whispered to herself in self excuse; and yet, deep down in her heart she knew that this was not quite true. Her father—however deeply wronged—would never cherish bitterness. “Our hatred hurts ourselves only. It never hurts those against whom it is directed,” he had often said.

The sound of a motor horn, behind her, in the "distance, warned her of the approach of a car. She knew that it must be Gillespie and Creed, and so without looking around, pulled off to the left, on the grassy border of the road. She saw Creed raise his hat as the car flashed passed, but he did not look in her direction. The Maranui homestead lay three miles beyond Weka Fiat, but Heather had never passed within the boundary gates of her enemy’s property. The afternoon sun was beginning to cast a lengthening shadow. She roused the old horse into a gentle jog trot. There were ten cows at home still waiting to be milked; perhaps Billy would have started on them—he’d promised to do so if he could get over in time. At the thought of Billy, a happier expression dawned in her eyes. What a good sort he was! She was lucky to have such a friend ! A true pal * with no sentimental nonsense about him !

The motor-car had long since been lost in the distance, and the road lay white and empty before her; rounding in a cutting the curve of the hill here, and dipping to a hollow there hut always following the course of the shining sapphire river which lay on its left. Where the blue was broken into sparkling rapids round the boulders, silt banks, and huge brown and rotting tree trunks, the sound of the rippling water mingled with the far off bleating of the sheep on the hills, and the whisper of the warm wind, as it passed down the valley. Sometimes the old cart rattled across a wooden culvert, built over a creek where native trees and ferns made a tangle of luxuriant, and cool green vegetation down to the water’s edge, and where the scent of the flowering cabbage trees was sweet in the air; and once or twice the jolting vehicle passed through the shadow of a patch of native bush,

which the bush fires of an earlier day had spared. At last as they came in view cf a little wooden cottage set a trifle back from the road in a clearing of the bush, the old horse’s pace quickened. They were nearly home, and he knew it ! Heather's eyes swept over "the wire fenced paddocks—dotted with blackened tree stumps—which Jay t-o the light of the house. Yes! There was Hilly, with three sheep dogs at his horse's heels, rounding up the cows, and driving them towards tne cowshed near the house. He saw her in the distance, waved and leaving the cows, cantered down to the gate to open it for her. She would think no more of Creed! Surely, it was making him of too much importance, to allow him to create this emotional disturbance within her. She hailed Billy gaily"Tou’re a brick to come over!” VVhat made you so late?” he asked, as he swung open the big wooden gate, and held it until she had passed through. “I dropped some of the stores—the case broke—and I had to back for them.” “Hidjer get them all again?’’ “Yes,” answered Heather shortly, with the memory of the manner of their restotation, flicking her on the raw once more. ‘You didn’t forget to order the tins of whitebait for me, didjer?” Hilly always said ‘didjer, and X am afraid that as in his youth no one had ever taught him to repeat that well-known, and useful little formula, “How now, brown cbw! in older to correct his colonial twang, and to get his vowel sounds rounded correctly, lie now m his twentyfourth year was so accustomed to sayiuocheerfully, “Heow neow, breown ceow ” (or its equivalent) that no vocal exercises would ever remedy his diction. But it was a happy diction, and pleasant in its own fashion, and he was a happy, pleasant boy, and a gentleman, though his accent might have sounded in English ears more reminiscent of the East End of London, than of the West. He of about the same height and build as Stephen Creed, and was dressed in a soft shirt—with the sleeves rolled up above his sunburnt elbows—and a shabby old pair of grey flannel trousers, -which were held round his waist by a leather strap; thick, hobnailed boots were on his feet, and a battered felt hat upon his bead ; and yet no knight in shining armour was more chivalrous, and no courtier better mannered, than Billy Winter, Heather’s loyal and devoted neighbour and friend. (Now- as she re-assured him with regard to whitebait, he continued ; “Who was it that Gillespie’d got in his car? Looked like a new chum.” “It. was Stephen Creed.” “Creed ! I thought he was in England.” “He’s got to spend part of his life m New Zealand as his property is here.” ‘Wes, the Government jolly well sees to that, and quite right too.” He had closed the gate, and was jogging along beside the cart. “Well! You’ll have someone now to talk to about Paris, and London. I’m just a poor country bumpkin —an ignorant New Zealander from the back-blocks. You won’t have much time for me, now that Creed’s come home. Directly he had spoken, he realised his mistake. How could he have been so foolish as to forget the story—not yet two years old. The ringing-in-case, for which Tom Burnside had faced the Racing Club Enquiry. Certainly Creed couldn’t have acted otherwise; he’d bought the horse in all good faith, believing him to lie a maiden, from Tom Burnside; he had to clear himself. But Billy Winter, now suddenly confronted with Heather’s blaz*ng eyes, was acutely and uncomfortably aware of the fact that he had most certainly put his foot in it; and Heather’s quick reply, / “Stephen Creed is the last man on earth I’d be likely to make a friend of,” left him without any adequate rejoinder. He , decided that having introduced Creed’s name as a topic of conversation, was not one of his brightest and happiest inspirations, and was grateful to the wandering cows for giving him a loophole of escape. “I‘ll be up with the cows, before you’ve taken Ginger cut,” he said; and cantered off. Ginger—it always seemed to Heather that the old horse had been christened by some satirically-minded person; she couldn’t fancy that even in youth, Ginger had been anything but lethargic— moved on slowly towards the house. The quickening of pace, which had been observable, before reaching the gate leading into the home paddock, had left him more immobile than before. The wooden, four-roomed cottage, stood on slightly rising ground, and its front verandah looked down over the paddocks and the road, to the river and the valley beyond. Across the brilliant azure of the stream, on the opposite bank, was a streak of gold-—gorse in full bloom—and bevond this again, a line of native bush, gathering into itself—among the trunks of the tall kahikateas—all sorts of shaded purple shadows. Always in the distance, past the river flats, were rolling green bids’ and then behind the whole landscape, and shutting it in as the backcloth of a theatre stage limits and encloses the visioned scene, was the line of the far off ranges—mauve, and blue, and purple, against the sky. In winter the highest peaks of these ranges were often white with snow, but no snow ever fell upon the plain, or even upon the lower hills. It was a glorious panorama, but the loneliness—the miles of country without one sign of human habitation—often seemed to grip Mrs Burnside like some actual physical menace. She had no idea of how it affected her daughter Heather, and she gave no hint of the feelings it engendered in her own heart. The sound of the sheep—always echoing in her ears from far and near—seemed like a plaintive cry, from her far off, vanished youth. Sometimes she felt she could hear it no longer, but being a very brave woman herself, she realised the fight which Heather was so pluckily putting up in

order to keep a roof over their heads, and she would never say anything which would be likely to discourage her dearly loved daughter. And yet, in spite of her courage, the death of her husband and eldest son, the shadow which had fallen upon her second bov, and the knowledge that all her girl’s ambitions for an artistic life would probably never now be made up a load, which at times she felt almost insupportable. It was then that the loneliness of this little homestead, set in the valley among the everlasting hills, seemed to her something from which she must escape at all costs. IJilly Winter, with his cheerful schoolboy grin, and fund of high spirits, had perhaps meant more to Mrs Burnside even than to Heather. He brought an atmosphere of buoyant optimism with him, and always reminded her of Stevenson’s saying, that the entrance of a happy person into a room is as though another candle had been lighted. His farm—too small to be dignified by name cf station—was only two miles off, over the hills at the back of Weka Flat, and he managed to visit them, for a short time at least, almost every day. Mrs Burnside was a handsome, slenderly made woman. Somewhat taller than her daughter. Her dark hair was streaked with grey, and her eyes were the same deep blue as Heather’s; but in the line of the brows; the deepened eye sockets; and in the whole expression of the older woman's face, was a look which bore witness to the sorrows she had known. There was no hint of any mental suffering in her manner at present, however. She had been gardening, and was now moving up through the little hedged and cultivated enclosure surrounding the cottage, towards the kitchen door, where Heather had pulled up, and was unloading the box of stores. “Did you see Billv?” she asked. “Yes,” answered Heather, “he met me at the gate, and he’s bringing up the cows.” "How good he is. He’s fed the fowls for you too.” “He's a dear.” “Tell him I’m making some of his special pikelets for tea. T’ll take in those things Heather, and I can let Ginger go. You run in and change.” “I’ll change while you get the things nut of the cart. Then I’ll take Ginger down myself. Don’t try to lift the box mother-" it’s too heavy, and in anv case it’s broken.” She ran into the house, leaving her mother to unload the stores, and in a few moments reappeared, minus, her skirts, and clad in the well worn' breeches and coat, which had seen much service during the war. Heather Burnside was usually spoken of by her friends as “little,” though in reality she was of medium height: but she was modelled on a slender scale, and so perh"~- —d wom " ” »he gave, on" the imscribed by Kipling as of “tall, deep bosomed women,’’ she gave one the impression cf a fragility and delicarv. which was by no means justified. Her well sham'd wrists, and small, though .longfingered hands, were-stronger by far than many others of a larger, and a coarser tvpe. ‘ All the stores had been taken out of the cart, and were Wing on the grass beside the kitchen door, so Heather mounted up on the driving seat once more, and minted Riw + l '" ■’’’’’bbv old vehicle round of the house, past the calf paddock, towards the line of roughly built sheds, and outhouses, on the left. ’ , Here were the stockyards, the dairy, ti’-n- house. "’’A in the background the fowl-runs and pig-sties : while bevond them, further to the left, the grom'd sloped sWnlv away to a creek, on the banks of which grew cabbage trees, feathery headed toitoi, and broad-leaved, shining flax bushes. Ti.w was no wool-shed attached to the Burnside’s farm; they shared one with Billv Winter, and ano+her nei-hbour. and it was situated near the boundary of the three properties. Sbearinc. docking, clipping, crutching. and all the sheep work, was done in the vicinity of this shed: and the same shearers did the work for all three farms. The, care of piss, the poultry, and toe work connected with the ten cows—-work \vh*ch comprised milking, separating, and taking the cream to the factor-"—Heather managed entirely by herself. I" old man who had Wn with Phillip and Tom, lived in a small whare near the sheen yards further out, and he came in, almost every day to the cottage for an hour or two. to do the killing, and the jobs which were to heavy for Heather. But the work was all too heavy for Heather. Mrs Burnside often thought, frn could not hear t 0 see her dano-hter carrying the pails of milk to the dairy to separate the cream, and afterwards lifting the big buckets cf skim milk to en'"t'' them into the toughs for the pigs. Milking perhaps was net so had : fwt it meant an impr-tM” hour, and was a tie which prevented Heatbev from leaving the place—even had she wisheef to do so—for more than a few hours at a time. .And after alt it was not fair or right, that a girl of Heather’s ace should not have her little season of gaietv and pleasure. Voutb passed so quickly, alas! and Heather had never known anything after her school life, hut strenuous effort. Mrs Burnside locking hack at the time she had «nent in Wairiri before her marriage, and for some years afterwards, remembered the dances. the tennis afternoons. the race meetings, tb“ riding narties and moonlight picnics: all the glamour and hanniness. of that pleasant easv life. Whv should her girl be cheated of her vi'n-t-tful bwi't.aup? Heather had many’ friends in Wairiri. and living in the station homesteads in the district, who would welcome her at anv of the gaieties, taking place in the township or elsewhere. But Heather at this moment was not thinking of missed opnmtunities. She had unharnessed and let, go the staid old Ginger, who was enjoying a roll in the

sandpit; and she and Billy were now laughing together like two children, at the young man's futile efforts to bail-up, and leg-rope, a recalcitrant cow'. (To be continued).