by Lark, Sarah
“It was her first love. She just has to push through,” Daphne said. “I still remember how I howled back then. I was twelve, and he was a sailor. He took my virginity, the bastard, and didn’t even pay me. No, he told me he would marry me and take me around the world. What an idiot I was. Since when do sailors take their sweethearts to sea? But he spun his yarn about how he would stow me away in a lifeboat. When he disappeared, my world shattered. I’ve never trusted another man since. But that’s the exception, Helen. Most fall for the next boy straightaway. It would be good for your Lainie to have something to do. Sitting around crying won’t do her a bit of good.”
So Helen tried to convince Elaine to give up her exile, with Fleurette and Ruben’s encouragement. Still, it was a few weeks before she could be lured back to town and talked into working in the store or the hotel.
The girl who displayed fabric and registered guests was no longer the old Elaine. Not only because she had lost weight and looked pale and tired—those came with heartbreak, Daphne explained. More alarming was Elaine’s behavior. She no longer laughed with people, no longer walked through town with her head held high, no longer let her locks blow free in the wind. Instead, she tried to make herself invisible. She preferred to help in the kitchen rather than work at the reception desk, and was more inclined to find tasks in the storehouse than to assist customers. When she bought a dress, she no longer chose anything cheery or colorful, but instead opted for something inconspicuous. As for her hair, which William had once described “as though spun from copper by angels”—another line he had never really meant—Elaine had once let it dance around her as though electrified. Now, however, she straightened it impatiently with water before tying it into a bun behind her head.
The girl seemed strangely shriveled. She shuffled about with a sunken gaze and hunched back. Every look in the mirror was a form of torture for Elaine, who saw only an ugly, average face staring back at her. Dumb and lacking in talent, she was nothing in comparison to the wonderful Kura Warden. Elaine saw herself as scrawny and flat-chested, where she had once thought herself slim and petite. “Elfin,” William had said. At the time she had thought that a wonderful compliment. But what man wanted an elf? Men wanted a goddess like Kura!
Elaine sank into self-flagellation, though Inger tried repeatedly to cheer her up. The girls had become friends, and the news that her father had hired Søren to take William’s place in the store and that the young Swede wanted to marry Inger had drawn Elaine out of her sorrow, for a while at least. But Inger was no real help. Elaine was not exactly complimented when her friend remarked casually that Daphne would chomp at the bit for a girl like her. Sure, she was good enough for a brothel, but a man like William could never love her.
As time went on, William’s face began to fade from her memory. She could think about his touch and his kisses without feeling the acute pain that they would happen no more. In short, exactly what Daphne and everyone else had prophesied would happen, did. Elaine got over what William did.
But not what Kura did.
William set out for the Canterbury Plains on the same day as Gwyneira and Kura, though the three of them did not travel together, of course. Gwyneira had packed her light baggage in her buggy and asked Ruben to send the rest of her things along on the next supply transport to Christchurch. Then she had turned her horse northward and trotted off. After bedding down for a night in the gold-miners’ camp again, William had to buy a horse before he could be on his way. Ultimately, however, he moved faster than Gwyneira and Kura because, on the return journey the two of them spent the night only on farms that were known to them and therefore had to take occasional detours.
William kept his breaks short. He did not like sleeping in the wild, and the winter weather was biting cold. So he reached Haldon a full two days earlier than Gwyneira, rented a room in a rather dingy local hotel, and immediately began looking for work in town. The settlement did not particularly appeal to him. Haldon consisted only of a single Main Street, which was lined with the usual businesses—a pub, a doctor, an undertaker, a smith, and a general store with a large lumberyard. The entire town consisted of one- and two-story wooden houses, many of which could have used a fresh coat of paint. The street was not well paved, proving muddy in winter and no doubt dusty in summer. In addition, it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere—true, there was a little lake, but aside from that, there was only grassland in every direction, which managed to remain a restrained green despite the cold season. In the distance on a clear day, one could see the mountains. Though they looked near enough, this impression was an illusion. A person would have to ride for hours to come perceptibly any closer to them.
Throughout the wide area surrounding Haldon were numerous sheep farms, large and small, which all lay many miles apart from each other. There was also talk of Maori villages in the area, but exactly where they were almost no one knew, as the natives often migrated from one location to another.
Everyone, however, knew Kiward Station, the Wardens’ farm. Mrs. Dorothy Candler, the store owner’s wife and apparently the town’s gossip center, gave William a comprehensive explanation of the family’s history. She reported with reverence that Gwyneira McKenzie was real landed gentry from Wales, and that a certain Gerald Warden, the founder of Kiward Station, had brought her to New Zealand many years ago.
“Just think, on the same ship I came on! God, I was afraid of the passage. But not Mrs. McKenzie, she was happy to come. She was looking for adventure. She came here to marry Gerald Warden’s son, Lucas. A pleasant man, Lucas Warden, really an admirable, very restrained gentleman—only he didn’t have much to do with the farm. He was more of an artist, you see. He painted. Later he disappeared—to England, Mrs. McKenzie says, to sell his paintings. But it’s hard to say if that’s true. There were a lot of rumors going around for a while. At some point he was declared dead, may he rest in peace. And Mrs. McKenzie married this James McKenzie fellow. He’s a nice man, really. I don’t want to say anything bad about Mr. McKenzie, but he was a rustler, you know! The McKenzie Highlands were named after him. He hid out there until a man named Sideblossom caught him. Well, and then Gerald Warden met his end on the same day as Howard O’Keefe. Bad business that, bad business. Mr. O’Keefe killed Mr. Warden, whose grandson then shot Mr. O’Keefe. Later they tried to play it off as an accident.”
After a half hour with Mrs. Candler, William’s head was spinning. It would take him some time to make sense of all that. But this first impression of the Wardens was encouraging: compared with all the misconduct in this family, a thwarted attempt on an Irish politician’s life was rather a venial sin.
Nevertheless, he would have to work hard to make a good impression. After the scandal Helen O’Keefe had made of his few kisses with Kura, Mrs. McKenzie was certainly not going to be speaking well of him. That was why William went straight to work looking for a job. He had to have a secure position before he called on the Wardens. Mrs. McKenzie was not to think he was after Kura’s inheritance, after all. An allegation he would be prepared to deny categorically at any time! Financial considerations may have played a small role in his courtship of Elaine, but when it came to Kura, William would have wanted her even if she were a beggar.
The situation did not look promising on the surrounding sheep farms. Management positions were not being offered at all. William would have been able to start as a shepherd, but even those jobs were hard to come by in the winter—and didn’t take into account the miserably low wages, primitive lodging, and hard work. Yet his work as a bookkeeper in Ruben’s store proved helpful. The Candlers were positively enthusiastic when he inquired about a job. Dorothy’s husband, who had only been to the village school himself, reacted almost euphorically to William’s educational history.
“I’m always having trouble with the books!” he freely admitted. “It’s practically a punishment for me. I love spending time with people, and I understand buying and selling. But numbers? I keep those more in my head than
in the books.”
Mr. Candler’s records reflected that. Even after only a fleeting glance, William found several ways to simplify storage and, even more importantly, to save on taxes. Candler grinned like a Cheshire cat and gave William a bonus immediately. Dorothy, a model housewife, looked around for lodging suitable to William’s station. She arranged for him to sublet a room in her sister-in-law’s house and invited him almost every day to eat with them—during which time she took the opportunity to parade her sweet daughter Rachel before his eyes. Under other circumstances, William probably would not have said no. Rachel was a tall girl with dark hair and soft brown eyes, a beauty through and through, but compared to Kura, like Elaine, she fell short.
None of the Wardens or McKenzies made an appearance in town for a while. Kiward Station made purchases, of course, but Gwyneira usually sent employees to pick the items up. Dorothy revealed to him during one of their regular, gossip-laden teatimes that Gwyneira bought almost all of her dresses in Christchurch.
“Now that the roads are better, that’s not as difficult as it once was. It used to be a trip around the world, but now… And the little one, her granddaughter, is really rather spoiled. I can’t remember her ever setting foot in our store. She has to have every little thing sent from London.”
William found this information disappointing. Of course, it was wonderful that Kura had taste, and the dress selection at the Candlers’ store would truly have been beneath her. But he had hoped that he would run into her in Haldon—at first, by chance and later, perhaps, even secretly—and he realized that that was not going to happen.
Nevertheless, Mrs. McKenzie finally appeared, almost six weeks after William had arrived in the Canterbury Plains. She sat on the box of a covered wagon beside a somewhat older but tall and powerful-looking man. They greeted the town’s residents self-assuredly, though the man did not give the impression of being an employee. This had to be her husband, James McKenzie. William used his hidden position in the general store’s office to get a closer look at the pair. Mr. McKenzie had brown, slightly shaggy hair with a hint of gray. His skin was brown and weathered, and like Mrs. McKenzie, his face was dominated by laugh lines. The two of them appeared to enjoy a harmonious marriage. Especially noticeable, though, were James’s alert brown eyes, which looked friendly, but made clear that he was not a man easily fooled.
William considered whether he should seek out James’s acquaintance, but decided against it. Mrs. McKenzie might have complained about him. It was better to let things settle down for a few more weeks. He suddenly felt a deep urge to see Kura again, however. So the following Sunday he saddled his horse, which hadn’t had much to do since he’d arrived, and rode to Kiward Station.
Like most visitors, William was quite struck by the sight of the manor house set in the middle of the wilderness. He had been rambling along through mostly untouched land, past endless grassy plains, which didn’t look as though they’d been grazed and which were only occasionally interrupted by a rock formation or a small crystal clear lake. And then riding around a bend, he suddenly thought he’d been set down in rural England. An immaculately tended entry road carefully covered with gravel led through a sort of avenue sown with southern beeches and cabbage trees, and then opened onto a circular flower bed planted with blooming red bushes. Beyond it lay the approach to Kiward Station. That was no farm; that was a palace!
The house had obviously been designed and built by English architects from the gray sandstone typical of the country, which was only used in cities like Christchurch and Dunedin for “monumental buildings.” Kiward Station had two floors, and the facade was enlivened by numerous turrets, oriels, and balconies. The stables could not be seen, but William supposed they were behind the house along with a garden. He had no doubt that this residence had a well-tended landscape garden, perhaps even a rose garden—even if Gwyneira McKenzie had not encouraged the impression that gardening was among her passions. Something like that would appeal more to Kura. William let himself daydream of her, dressed in white with a flower-decorated straw hat, plucking a few roses from the bushes and climbing up the stairs to the house with a basket full of flowers.
But the thought of Kura also brought him back to reality. He couldn’t simply barge his way in here. He would never run into the girl “by accident” on this estate, especially since he knew that Kura was not exactly a nature lover. If she left the house, then surely it would only be to visit the gardens, and those were likely fenced in. Besides, the area was probably swarming with gardeners. The carefully maintained approach alone suggested there must be several of them.
William turned his horse around. He wanted to avoid being seen. Lost in his dismal thoughts, he began to circle the estate from a distance. A farm road led from the manor house to the stables and paddocks, where horses were chewing on the sparse winter grass. William did not turn in that direction, as the danger of meeting people who would ask him what he was doing there seemed too great. Instead, he took a narrow footpath through the grassland and stumbled upon a copse of trees. The southern beeches and the lack of underbrush appeared European, and he was momentarily reminded of England or Ireland. A path that looked more worn by people’s feet than horses’ hooves wound through the thicket. Full of curiosity, William followed the path.
After rounding a bend, he almost collided with a young woman who seemed as lost in thought as he was. She wore an austere dress, which she’d paired with a small dark hat that made her look older. She made the surreal impression on William of an English governess on her way to church.
The young man halted his horse at the last moment and put on his kindest and most apologetic smile. He would have to quickly think up an excuse for being there.
The woman did not exactly look like a specialist in animal husbandry. Maybe she thought he was one of the workers. William greeted her politely and then added, “Excuse me.” If he simply rode on right away, the woman would no doubt hardly remember him.
At first, she didn’t even lift her head. Only after his apology did she grant him a look. William cursed his upper-class accent. He really ought to try to develop his Irish accent.
“There is no need to apologize. I didn’t notice you either. The paths here are an affront.” The woman made an indignant face but then tried a shy smile. Her pale-blonde hair, pale skin, and gray-blue eyes made her look washed out, and her face was a little long but finely formed. “Can I offer you some assistance? You don’t really mean to be going to visit the Maori?”
The way the woman pronounced the word, one might think she was referring to a tribe of cannibals and that visiting them would be an act of madness. In her plain dark-gray dress and boring black hat, she could have been mistaken for a missionary. She was carrying some sort of songbook under her arm.
William smiled. “No, I wanted to go to Haldon,” he claimed. “But this doesn’t appear to be the right way.”
The woman frowned. “Indeed, you have gotten rather lost. This is the footpath between the Maori camp and Kiward Station. The building behind you is the manor, and you have probably already ridden past the Maori camp, but you cannot see it from the road. Your best option would be to ride back to the house and take the main road.”
William nodded. “How could I go against advice spoken from such charming lips?” he asked gallantly. “But what is a young lady such as yourself doing among the Maori?”
This last point truly did interest him. This woman spoke flawless upper-class English, albeit with a slight twang.
The woman rolled her eyes. “I have been asked to, well, to bring some religion to these savages. The pastor asked me to hold a devotion in the camp on Sundays. Their former teacher, Helen O’Keefe, always did that, and Mrs. Warden continued it.”
“Mrs. Gwyneira Warden?” William asked, surprised, though he risked his cover by doing so. Gwyneira had not struck him as the godly type.
“No, Mrs. Marama Warden. She is Maori herself, but she married again and now lives at O’
Keefe Station in the next camp. She runs a school there.” The young lady did not look like the missionary work made her particularly happy. But wait—had she not just mentioned teaching? Could this be Kura Warden’s governess?
William could hardly believe his luck—that is, if the relationship between Kura and her beloved Miss Witherspoon was really as close as the girl had indicated in Queenstown.
“You teach the Maori?” he inquired. “Do you only teach there, or—I hardly dare ask—but Miss Warden spoke very affectionately of a Miss Witherspoon.”
Kura had not actually spoken about her tutor with “affection,” but, at best, with a sense of forced alliance against all the philistines all around them. Regardless, Miss Witherspoon was the only person at Kiward Station with whom Kura enjoyed halfway friendly relations. And the young woman looked like she could use some encouragement.
A wide smile spread over Miss Witherspoon’s strict face. “Really? Kura spoke warmly of me? How do you know Miss Warden?”
The young woman looked at him searchingly, and William worked to assume a contrite and simultaneously waggish expression. Could it really be that Kura had not even mentioned him?
Then Miss Witherspoon seemed to come to her own conclusions. “Wait a moment. You’re not…?” Miss Witherspoon’s distrustful look gave way to excitement. “But you must be! You are William Martyn, are you not? According to Kura’s description…”
Kura had described William down to the last detail—his blond hair, his dimpled smile, the radiant blue eyes. Miss Witherspoon beamed at him. “How romantic! Kura knew you would come. She simply knew it. She has been dreadfully depressed ever since Mrs. McKenzie was suddenly called back from Queenstown.”
