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Six Little New Zealanders

Chapter XIV — Uncle Stephen's Story

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Chapter XIV
Uncle Stephen's Story

One day Mr. McLennan and Denise drove up in the big grey motor and carried me away to The Point for a week.

At least I went for a week, but I stayed much longer, as a heavy fall of snow blocked our return for nearly a fortnight, and after that the floods came down.

Denise and I used to sit at the dining-room window, which overlooked the river bed. No narrow, winding channels now, no rushing streams nor cunning little islands—a wild waste of waters stretching from bank to bank, thundering on its way, bringing great logs and trees from the gorge higher up, tearing at its banks like a hungry creature, carrying away bridges and submerging all the low-lying land till tussock and boulder, Broom and manuka, disappeared from view.

Not that there were any bridges to sweep away at McLennan's Point. There you had to ford the river, just as we did at Kamahi. But all the roads are on the Kamahi side of the river, so when the waters are high the people at McLennan's Point page 204are quite cut off from the rest of the world. No one can cross to them, and they cannot go out to anyone; they have to wait till the floods are over and the river fordable again.

Mr. McLennan said that he was afraid that it would be dull, but it wasn't—not a bit. You see, Denise and I were such great friends and had so much to talk about. The boys and Nancy were at boarding-school in Christchurch, so we were quite by ourselves. In the evenings we played games with Mr. McLennan and a jolly nice cadet who lived with them. Sometimes we would sing, and I used to thump out tunes on the piano for them. I can't play very well, but I love music. Kathie can make jumps and runs and surlygiggles, but my hands are too small, so I just have to play the things which come into my mind. Mr. McLennan liked those best.

"Your music is a part of you, Ngaire," he said. "Did no one ever tell you that you had a real talent?"

No one ever had, but you can't expect a family to be complimentary. It isn't in them.

It was a very happy visit, but there was one day which wasn't quite so happy as the others, and that day I remembered for a long time. It was one evening when I was playing to Denise, who was lying in the big chair before the fire. Suddenly she looked up at me.

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"Ngaire, come here," she said.

"What is it, Denise?"

"Did you hear father come into the room just now? You were playing, and he whispered to me. Ngaire; Alan has come home,"

The log on the fire cracked and split; a thousand sparks made merry on the hearth.

"Don't look like that, dear. Rob is quite safe, only—"

"Has he come too?"

"No.. Oh, I meant to break it gently, but you look so. He's quite safe, quite well, but he wouldn't come back with Alan. They've been roughing it in the King Country—bush whacking."

So Alan had come back, glad to be home again. But Rob? He would face it out, finish what he had begun. Rob was always like that, though now my heart ached as Denise told me a little of what they had suffered and how they had struggled together away back in the bush lands. Once she held out her arms to me.

"You'll forgive Alan, won't you, Ngaire?" she whispered. "He is going to try again and work hard. And Rob is such a brave boy; he helped Alan over and over again when they were down on their luck. Oh, I expect Rob will be home very, very soon now. Why, he may even be on the way."

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But I didn't think so—I understood Rob too well —and deep in her heart I knew that Denise cherished no hope of his immediate return. Even Alan, though he tried clumsily to cheer me, was a doubtful comforter. Somehow I didn't dislike Alan any longer; he was quieter and more thoughtful for Denise and for his father, trying to pick up the threads where he had thrown them down six months ago.

"Do you know where Rob is now?" I asked him the first evening, long before he had come to the end of the story—I could not be interested in even very thrilling adventures when Rob's future hung in the balance. "Do you know where he went to after you left him?"

Alan exchanged looks with his father, but I was watching him so closely that he spoke out frankly.

"No, not exactly. He left the King Country with me, and came as far as Pahiatua, but there we parted. He had some idea of a trip across to Australia, but he kept his ideas to himself. He knew I was coming home, you see, and perhaps—"

"He'll be home very soon," reiterated Denise.

"Probably he'll walk in unexpectedly one fine morning when you're not thinking of him," said Mr. McLennan cheerfully.

But that could not be; I was always thinking of Rob.

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I enjoyed my stay at The Point; they could not have made more of me if I had been the Queen of England or an Empress all on my own, but, all the same, I was glad to snuggle under the rugs in the motor and set off Kamahiwards again. It was good to view the red roof of the homestead, to hear the dogs bark a frantic welcome, and to meet the family on the veranda waiting to welcome me. It was good to see the warm, cosy nursery and Jan, with pink hair ribbons and a blue blouse, presiding at the tea-table. It was good to sample the big dish of flapjacks made especially for the occasion by Mrs. McPherson, the juicy pineapple contributed by Uncle John, the sweets that Jan had manufactured, the rather stodgy spongecake which Kathie had iced to cover any deficiencies. It was good even to hear Uncle John growl, to work sums next day with the possibility of an intrusion and an exam from Uncle Stephen, to listen to Uncle Dan's bad jokes. It was all so pleasant and familiar and homelike; yes, "homelike" now, for Kamahi had come to be home to us all.

It was not till we had finished the flapjacks and the strawberry jam and begun on the pineapple and bananas that I heard the news.

"Uncle Dan and Kathie have got engaged," announced Pipi.

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"She means they aren't engaged any more," explained Jock. "Kathie doesn't wear a ring now."

"Guess they've quar'lled. I saw them standin' by the slip rails one night, an' I went up to them an' Kathie was saying—"

"Be quiet, Pipi!" But you could see that Jan was really just cracking with curiosity.

" 'They did rise—but it has been all a mistake. He-here's the ring.' "

We didn't say "Be quiet!" this time; it was too interesting.

"She throwed it at him an' her voice was choking. I guess she felt like cryin' till she saw me coming. An' then she took my arm an' called me dear an' darling, an' we went up to the house an' Uncle Dan stayed where he was. An'—"

Pipi paused, indignation in her voice.

"An' guess what she did? After calling me darlin' all the time he could hear, d'rectly we got to the house she told me to go to bed—as cross as two sticks."

Afterwards, when Pipi left us, I asked Jan if she thought Uncle Dan and Kathie would make it up. Jan said she didn't think so; she guessed it was the beginning of the end. We should all be old maids, and Kathie would be the oldest of us all.

And it seemed that Jan was right. Kathie and Uncle Dan didn't seem a bit inclined to make, it page 209up, though you could see that they were both as miserable as they could be. Uncle Dan went rounding up sheep at the most distant part of the estate, and sometimes he rode over to Winton's Corner, which made Kathie madder than ever, as she couldn't bear Elspeth Winton.

And Kathie? When Jan cries you can trace the marks of her tears on her inflamed and puffy lids; I can never indulge in the luxury of a private weep without leaving tell-tale shadows under my eyes; but Kathie is just a little more entrancing when she is crying than she is at any other times. It sounds improbable, but it is true; she looks so pathetic and lonesome, and her eyes are so soft and dewy that you want to take her into your arms and smooth out all the troubles for her. I am sure that Uncle Dan wanted to, though he pretended he didn't, and whenever he was present Kathie held her head high and laughed an awful lot, and once she flirted— yes, actually flirted—with an English cadet who was staying at The Grays.

That same night I went into our bedroom to borrow a hair ribbon from Jan's box. The door between our room and Kathie's was ajar, and I could see her lying face downwards on her bed, and because she was so still I knew that she was crying.

How hard it is to show, the sympathy you feel in quite the right way! My way was quite the wrong page 210way, I expect, because Kathie bounced up very suddenly.

"Is there no refuge from you children?" she asked. "You swarm, you absolutely swarm. For goodness sake leave me alone for once in my life. I've—I've got a headache,"

She glared at me hard to show that she hadn't been crying. But I knew!

That night I curled myself up on the wide window-seat in the library and gazed out into the growing darkness. It was a cold, damp, miserable evening. Nothing seemed right and everything seemed wrong. I thought of father and mother far away, of Rob wandering lonely and disheartened through the world, of Uncle Dan and Kathie who had quarrelled and who would never be engaged again or married in the years to come.

Then someone came into the room, and a cheery, melancholy-dispersing voice hailed me.

"Hallo, little woman! Pleasantly engaged in looking on the dark side?" Oh, no!

"The sunny view, then. You don't seem very happy over it. What is wrong?"

Uncle Stephen swung himself on to the seat beside me; his kind eyes looked quizzically into mine. Suddenly I found the burden rolling off my shoulders. After all, Uncle Stephen was just page 211 the person to settle everything. Uncle Dan and Kathie would listen to him and make friends and get engaged again. He was so loving and tender and understanding, and he had a way of getting straight to the root of a matter.

"Couldn't you, uncle?" I asked, after explaining the trouble to him. "You see, they'd listen to you."

"I'm nervous," said uncle. "It's a delicate matter, Ngaire. Lovers settle their own quarrels best."

"But these lovers don't. They've been at it ever since I came home, and every day they're getting farther and farther apart, and some day they will go so far that there will be no coming back."

I choked. I could just imagine it all, how it would happen. Uncle looked at me gravely.

"Where do you get your wisdom, child?" he asked. "Perhaps I might, as you say, be able to help things on a little. I've always been too inclined to hold back. This time I'll rush in, though it may be where angels would fear to tread. Does Kathie—"

"S-s-sh!"

Kathie had come into the room and went to the bookshelves, searching for something to read. Uncle held out his hand.

"Join us here," he suggested. "I hate to let the glare of the lamp loose on the half light. Do without your book awhile; I want to talk."

Kathie came over to us, but it was easy to see page 212that she wasn't keen on our company; she sat gazing miserably in front of her. Uncle Stephen was silent too. He seemed to have forgotten our presence, and his eyes had a "long way back" look. Suddenly he spoke.

"Have you ever wondered why I never married, Katrine?"

Kathie jumped, and said "No" with such a mighty hurry and with such emphasis that you could see that she had thought about it—lots. Uncle's eyes held a smile.

"It would be only natural, dear—more unnatural if you hadn't. You are just at an age when these things come first…. She lived over the river at Ngapapa Station."

"Why"—Kathie faltered, stumbling over the words—"Why didn't you—Oh, I beg your pardon."

"It's all right, Katrine. She was beautiful, I think. Jan sometimes reminds me of her."

"Jan !!!!!!!" Seven notes of exclamation couldn't express all that Kathie got into that one word. Uncle had said "she" was beautiful, and now Kathie could imagine her flopping all over the house with lots of hair ribbon and short-long dresses.

"Not so much what Jan is now, but as she will be in a few years' time. Your sister will make a page 213fine woman, Katrine. Her voice is Allison's own, and the way she has of carrying her head."

"Jan pokes—sometimes," said Kathie, and then coloured and wished she hadn't spoken. Uncle went on slowly as if he had forgotten us, and was back in the past with the girl whom he had loved long ago.

"It was in the spring; we were to have been married in two weeks. One evening she rode over to Kamahi. We quarrelled, and she saddled her horse and rode away again. She had to ford the river—"

"It was in flood?" suggested Kathie in a very low, hushed tone.

"It rose suddenly. It must have overtaken her somewhere about midstream. They found her horse lower down. I never saw her again."

Never again! Uncle had loved her and the waters had carried her away. I remembered the first crisp morning and the story that Rob had told to me as we stood on the edge of the little peninsula and watched the streams rushing over the stones. He had spoken of the girl, the one woman who had been carried to her death in the rush of the cruel waters, but he had not known, as I had not until to-day, the whole tragedy of it. She would have married Uncle Stephen. He had never loved any-page 214one else; all his life he had lived faithful to the memory of her.

Uncle put his arms around me.

"Why tears, little woman? The story was too sad for you. It is all past and over long ago, dear."

"But the ache is always there. Oh, uncle!"

"The ache is the best thing I know, dear. No one can ever take it from me. Now come to tea. See, I can carry you like a baby."

He took me away in his arms, pausing to advise Kathie on the choice of a book.

"Try 'The Right of Way,' over there on the second shelf. No, not that one, the next."

"Thank you, uncle." Kathie turned from us and went on searching, and she must have gone on searching, searching long after we had left, because Mary came into the nursery to see if she were taking tea with us, as she hadn't appeared at dinner and Uncle John was inquiring for her.

That night I could not sleep.

I lay thinking of Uncle Stephen's sad story and of the girl whom the waters had washed away—out of his life for ever. In the next room Kathie was pacing restlessly up and down, and I knew that she was thinking of uncle too. Sometimes she would pause as if listening, but not for long. Soon she would be walking again; up and down, up and page 215down, from bed to window, window to bed, and back to the window once more.

I suppose I must have dozed off after a while, because the next thing I heard was the sound of footsteps on the veranda outside and a light scrunch, scrunch of the gravel as someone disappeared round the corner of the house. I slipped on a pair of shoes and a coat, stuck my hands deep in the pockets, and turned up the collar. Then I followed Kathie out into the night, keeping at a respectable distance, and well out of her sight.

She went across the lawn, skirting round the veranda where the light from the office streamed out into the darkness, through the pine plantation, and over the tussocks which led to the river. It was a still, still night. The dampness and mist of the earlier evening had fled before the weird, silver light of the moon. It felt lonely. Do you understand? The familiar tussock spaces were touched with mystery; the hills on the opposite side of the river were wrapped in darkness; and the waters seemed to stretch away into the distance for ever and ever, each little island and cape and promontory touched with a beauty all its own.

Kathie wandered along the bank of the river. She had wrapped a white cloth about her head, and standing there in the flooding silver light she looked like a fairy princess.

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I limped on behind, spoiling the picture. Jan's coat was quite two sizes too large for me, and Pipi's shoes squashed my feet. But there's nothing artistic about me. You couldn't expect it with such short hair at one end and such skinny legs at the other.

For a long time Kathie stood straining her eyes across the waters; then all of a sudden she crumpled up, and I heard something very like a sob. Somehow I found myself at her side, and though she seemed surprised to see me, she put her arm about my shoulders as if she took comfort from my presence.

But soon she turned from me, her eyes on the waste of silvery waters. Once or twice she started, gazing with an intensity which hurt, as if dimly discerning a longed-for figure coming to us across the ford from the other side of the river.

Poor old Kathie. It wasn't very hard to divine her thoughts. I knew that she was waiting for Uncle Dan, who had set out for Ngapapa early in the day and who had not yet returned. And all the time Uncle Stephen's sad story was tugging at her heart till her thoughts were all of floods and waters rising when they weren't expected to, and helpless men and women being swept over the shingley bed and dashed against the cruel boulders.

"The river looks very safe to-night," I said when the silence grew oppressive.

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Kathie turned eagerly, snatching at the grain of comfort which I offered.

"Do you think so? Do you really think so, Ngaire?"

"I've never seen it so low or so safe-looking before," I said, and though I knew so little of the conditions of the ford, Kathie seemed to find reassurance in my words.

"Uncle Dan will most prob'ly be late to-night. I think I heard him say so," I volunteered next.

But Kathie turned very suddenly this time, with quite a wild look in her eyes.

"No, he said he would be back at seven, and it's nearly ten now. I heard him tell Uncle John.

I—Ngaire, they weren't risen a bit; they were as flat as pancakes, absolute pancakes, nothing else."

"Oh!" I said, rather perplexed, and wondering how a ford could be a pancake, or what, by any chance, a pancake had to do with a ford. It is sometimes rather difficult to follow Kathie; her conversation takes such rapid twists.

"It was the scones," said Kathie, with a hint of a smile behind her fears. "He said they weren't as good as Mrs. McPherson's, and I said they were risier —much risier. They weren't; they were as flat as they could be—flatter than pancakes. It does seem so stupid now—so petty."

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She broke off with a laugh. "We were both a couple of sillies, but I was the silliest silly after all."

"You couldn't help it, dear, and I know Uncle Dan likes your scones. I saw him eat six one day— the day he was ill."

Kathie gave me a queer, crooked smile.

"What should we do without you, Kiddy?" she asked.

But that made me think of Rob. It was here that he had left me, but then there had been no moon, only the dank, enveloping mist and the creeping darkness. We had not heard from him since. Perhaps—

For a long time we stood silently watching, our eyes on the wide expanse of silvery waters.

I saw him first. He came riding across the ford, sitting very straight in the saddle, with the moonlight full on him. Kathie gave a low cry.

It didn't look a bit like ordinary, everyday Uncle Dan. It's wonderful how the moon changes and glorifies It seemed to me that we had slipped away to the middle ages, and that Uncle Dan was the fayre knighte of the Table Round coming across the waters to rescue his ladye love. He rode straight up to us.

Kathie moved a step forward and a step back; she held her head very high.

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"I—we—were just going for a stroll in the moonlight," she began. Then suddenly her voice came in a big, choking sob, half laugh, half cry.

"Oh, Dan!"

Uncle looked down on her, and something in the back of his eyes made me feel funny and queer and excited all down my spine.

"Katrine, dear, you came to meet me."

"Yes, and to make it up. We've been a couple of sillies. Uncle Stephen told me this afternoon— the story of his life, and oh, Dan, what if the river had risen and you had been drowned? How could I have lived my life without you?"

Kathie disengaged herself very quickly.

"See, Ngaire has been helping me to bear it. Ngaire—"

"What, that ubiquitous child again?" asked Uncle Dan, and though his voice was kind and his eyes smiled and it was all very interesting, I could see that I wasn't wanted. So I went up to the house by myself, leaving them to follow more slowly.

And they got themselves engaged once more.