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CHAPTER XVI

asia was eighteen.

For months the inevitable fact that she would be eighteen had dominated her thoughts, and her mother, watching her, sensed with her uncanny aptitude for presentiment that something was in the air. What that something was she feared so much that she refused to think about it.

Now Asia's birthday was two weeks behind her, and Alice had seen for days that the dread something was fast approaching. As she paced the beach below the cliffs one evening, with the river running silently beside her under the cool spring stars, she knew she was only indulging in her old habit of putting off the evil hour. As she walked, she hated the thought that old habits could still dominate her. She hated her own exhaustless capacity for suffering. She hated her terrible dependence on the people she loved. She hated her inability to be just where she suffered.

At last, shivering, but not with cold, she set her face homewards. Ahead of her, across the river, she saw the moving lantern of the mill watchman going his rounds, and the red lamps on the ends of the wharves, and the head lights of a big Australian barque that lay moored to one of them.

Tom Roland's dream was coming true. He had built his mill and enlarged it, and was considering enlarging it again. Almost as fast as the logs could be run down from the bush they were sawn and loaded into the timber vessels that now came from all parts of the world in a continuous procession up the river.

By day the whole bay vibrated with the whistle and screech of the circular saws, the tear of the breakdowns, the rasp page 218 of the drags, the rattling of chains on the skids, the hum of the belting, the scream and clank of the donkey engines as they loaded flitches into the voracious holds of the ships, and, as a running accompaniment to all these, the triumphant roar of the great engines that drove every wheel and chain and belt.

The shutting off of all this fuss and buzz now intensified the silence of the nights. Even Alice was conscious as she walked home of the absence of the throb of the engines, of the vacant stillness of the hushed machinery. The intermittent sounds of the night were dwarfed by the memory of the day's loud speech. She heard, as it were, from a long way off, snatches of song from the barque, and the sounds of an accordion played somewhere at the head of the bay.

She turned wearily round the cliffs, and proceeded to climb steps now cut in the clay up the bank to a path above which joined at the boss's front gate with the old path leading directly down to the store. She paused several times, trying to fortify herself with the freshness of the night. Once she lingered, listening to the cry of the new baby, the second, at Bob Hargraves' house, a chain or two on the other side of the store path. As she stood, sweet scents floated down to her from the shrubs and flowers that now hid the foundations of her home.

Roland's picnicking days were over, and with the prospect of prosperity he had been willing to make of his house something more of a setting for his increasing success. The year before he had practically rebuilt the whole structure. A narrow central hall now ran from the front door to a large lean-to containing a porch, a scullery and a bathroom with a fitted tin tub, the latter creating a precedent for the entire northern end of the Auckland province. The distinction it gave his house in the eyes of passing travellers was a source of great satisfaction to the boss. Two bedrooms had also been inserted into the middle of the cottage, just behind the enlarged front rooms.

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Alice would have appreciated the changes much more if she had been consulted, or any notice taken of her wishes. But the only people whose advice Roland had deigned to consider were Mrs. Brayton, Bruce, and Asia. It was Asia who had had most to do with the scheme of interior decoration. Each stage in the furnishing of the rooms represented a stage in her artistic development, and each stage was the result of a visit to the Hardings, now removed to Auckland, and of explorations into the latest fads from America, which country largely influenced the evolution of household art in New Zealand.

As Roland was not as susceptible to the progressive nature of art, or as inclined to take it seriously as Asia was, he could be persuaded each time to impose only a little of the new upon the old, with the result that the patterns of the wall papers and the linoleum did not always agree, nor did the furniture balance properly in the room space, nor did the colours always harmonize. But Asia had high hopes of some day seeing it as a perfect whole.

At first Alice had been enthusiastic about the changes, but later she resented them. She could not see why it should be good to have a flowered wall paper admired at one time, only to have it scorned and discarded for a tinted one three years later. If it was beautiful once why was it not beautiful for ever? Mrs. Brayton's wonderful rooms had not been changed since the day they had first seen them. But in spite of her, and it was this that hurt, the evolution of art in the house on the cliffs had proceeded.

From the beginning she had been so thankful herself for every hard-won addition to mere comfort and convenience that the claims of art seemed ridiculous. For a person who had a passion for one great art she was singularly indifferent to others. Also, it seemed hard to her that Asia should be given money to make a show, when she had had to fight for every inch of comfort she had ever gained.

It was not that she was jealous of Asia; it was rather that Asia's success at managing people, and particularly page 220 Roland, brought home to her her own continued failure in this direction. It was true that she now got on much better with her husband. With success he was less irritable, and in ways he had become more considerate, particularly, she had noticed, during the last year. But she knew that her victories had been mostly Asia's victories. One instance came again to her memory, as she stopped for the last time before entering, outside the fence, at the corner by the cliffs.

It had been their first fight to get help in the house, help that was badly needed, as Alice grew less able to do her share. Asia was fourteen when she first began to question whether washing Roland's heavy flannels was part of the fixed duty of woman. Alice, though physically and temperamently unfit for housework, had never protested against anything, realizing that it was all in her marriage contract, and she told Asia it was no use to resent it. But Asia was a young rebel, fast developing a fierce hostility to anything that savoured of a law or an order, and she finally drove her mother into asking Roland for the extra money to pay for help.

“Good heavens! What are the girls doing?” he had demanded. “If they want luxuries of that kind where will it end?”

And Alice had succumbed immediately, and had wept about it in secret.

Asia stood it for a few weeks longer, and then one morning, when the flannels were heavier and dirtier than usual, she had burst in a white heat upon Tom Roland, who happened to be lying late in bed, and had told him that his flannels and his boots would stay dirty in future unless he got some one in to clean them.

He had stared back in amazement at her raging face, and then a flicker of amusement crossed his eyes.

“Holy Moses,” he snorted, “if it's as bad as all that, get two washerwomen.”

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“You don't know how to manage him, Mother,” said Asia wisely, later in the day.

That stung Alice to make a stand that night when her husband tried to get even with her. He had said only a few words when she turned on him.

“You stop annoying me about nothing,” she commanded, and turning half dressed, she walked out of the room and left him alone for the night, to digest his astonishment as best he could.

No one was more surprised than she was at the happy results of this incident. Asia calmly requisitioned one of the men's wives for all the washing and heavy cleaning, sending for her sometimes two days a week, and never again was a word said.

There was one thing for which Alice was supremely grateful to her husband. Never had he given a sign to show that he misunderstood her friendship with David Bruce. Though she knew they gave him no real cause for jealousy, she was none the less surprised at his apparent indifference to the amount of time they saw each other. She rightly took this to be a tribute more to Bruce than to herself, and it was one thing that was independent of Asia's influence.

For three years now Alice had felt something growing between herself and the child she idolized. It had begun with Asia's first visit to the Hardings in Auckland, and it had been increased by later visits, and especially by the theatre going that had risen up like a bogy to affright Alice. In vain Bruce told her that every girl got stage mad and got over it. In vain Asia told her mother that she was not going to the dogs because she loved plays. The unforgettable fact was that Asia continued to go to plays even though she knew it hurt her mother. Alice knew she had slipped into some other world of thought, and was shaping herself by a philosophy that she herself feared. And it was the end of all this that she feared. And somehow, in her mind, page 222 the beginning of the end had become associated with Asia's eighteenth birthday.

It was because she had felt it coming nearer that she had gone out this spring night to try to bring herself to face it.

After closing the front door behind her Alice stood in the hall listening. The stillness of the house seemed ominous. She moved to the sitting-room door, and when she saw Asia sitting alone by the fire she had the feeling of a creature trapped by something that has lain in wait for it.

Hearing her there, Asia raised a pale and uneasy face towards her.

“Mother, I want to talk to you.” She tried to make her voice casual, but it sounded strained.

Throwing off her cape, Alice walked slowly to her chair on the other side of the hearth, her face growing whiter.

“Where are the girls?” she asked weakly, feeling that she wanted no interruptions.

Betty and Mabel, who were now thirteen and eleven, were no longer referred to as the “children.”

“They've gone to bed.” Asia leaned down to put more wood on the fire.

“Is Tom home?”

“No. He won't be back to-night. He has sent word.”

Alice sat down, seeing Asia through a mist. The worst thing of all about this to her was the sense of her own utter helplessness to prevent, or postpone, or alter by one fraction the purpose of the clear, fearless, arrogantly youthful eyes that looked up at her with a tragic pity.

Asia was beautiful with a radiant vitality that stung every one to life when she entered a room. Her features were not classic like her mother's, nor faultlessly regular like the ideal of the adolescent, for they were too strong. But she had a fine white skin, delicately tinted, eyes with the subtle draw of deep pools, and masses of soft gold hair that waved with a dozen tints as she moved. She was eager and hungry for life and beauty, voracious for adventure, page 223 tremendously sure of herself and her right to live as she pleased. She had no conception of the chasm that separated her at eighteen from her mother, either at the same age or now. But she knew only too well the likely effect of what she now had to say.

The attempts she had made to show her mother whither she was tending only convinced her it was best to wear a mask, and when the inevitable break came to make it as short as she could. For years she had lived more closely to Mrs. Brayton and to Bruce than she had lived to her mother. She realized the tragedy of it. She knew what she had meant in her home. She knew what a blank she would leave behind.

As she looked at her mother's head bowed to the fire, she saw afresh what the years had done to that drooping figure and that pale, proud face, mellowed and more gracious certainly, and in ways more beautiful than ever. She wondered if she would ever solve the everlasting enigma of strength and weakness behind those suffering eyes. She set her teeth on the thought that she was now going to add to the grey hairs, the lines and the droop.

As she braced herself to speak, her mother raised her face, with a manner suggestive of noble resignation.

“Well?” she said patiently.

“Oh, Mother,” began Asia miserably, “I know I'm going to hurt you dreadfully, but, oh, please, do try to understand.”

Alice resented the implication that she might not understand all the more because she knew it was deserved.

“What is it?” she asked coldly, inviting the worst.

“I want to go away. I want to earn my own living. I want to see the world.”

“Yes?”

They were both looking into the fire. Those three sentences were what Alice had feared to hear, and she felt her heart set in her chest like a ball of plaster.

Asia had known beforehand that she would get no help, page 224 but she had determined to say everything there was to be said as shortly as possible. She clenched her hands on her knees, for she knew the look in her mother's eyes was just as bad as she had expected it would be.

“It isn't a new thing, Mother. I've wanted it for years, but I made up my mind I would wait till I was eighteen. I've thought about it till I've been sick—I know what it will mean to you—but I cannot help it. I must go. I can't be a parasite—I just can't.”

A flood of shame swept over Alice's face, and blinding tears rushed to her eyes, but Asia did not look at her as she forced herself on jerkily.

“And I want to see the world. It's all so wonderful to me, and I'm not afraid, and I know I can get on. You needn't worry about me, and, of course, I will come home to see you; but I can't stay here any longer. I have used this place up—I've breathed every breath there is to be got out of it. I would have gone two years ago but for you. I have thought of you. I've tried to tell you, but you wouldn't listen, and so I went on keeping it to myself till I couldn't any longer. I had to tell others—Uncle David and Mrs. Brayton.”

Alice sat up stiffly.

“You've told them first!”

“I had to tell somebody, Mother.”

The pain of this hardened Alice.

“And what do you think you can do?” she asked with a shade of scorn.

Asia winced, but kept anger out of her eyes and voice.

“I have music.”

“Yes, so had I.”

“Well, Mother, I've got to try, even if I fail, and I won't fail.”

“Oh, you foolish child, what do you know of the world?”

If there ever was a question better designed to make youth hate age and fight it, it is not on record.

Asia bit back the words that leapt to her lips. If she page 225 had not been so conscious of her mother's misery she would have said things that neither of them would have forgotten.

“If I don't know anything of the world,” she replied quietly, “it's time I began to learn, considering I have to live in it.”

“And may I ask how you are going to begin? Do you think you can capture the world in a week?”

“No, Mother. I am not quite mad. I am going to the Hardings; they will help me.”

“Oh, I see. They know too.” All trace of tears now left Alice. Henceforth she was frozen.

“Yes, I wrote to them. They think I can get on. The world is different from what it was when you tried. Mother, do see that. Do understand. Everybody helps women today. And it's nothing for a girl to earn her own living.”

“Oh, isn't it? You don't know anything about life and men. You don't know what girls have to put up with, especially when they—they look like you. You don't know yourself, or how clever men can fool you, and lie to you.”

“A good many women seem to survive it, Mother. I don't see why I shouldn't. I'm not afraid, and if I make mistakes I will learn. I'm not going to the devil.”

Her proud self-confidence angered her mother.

“How little you know what you are talking about. You've lived a sheltered life here. You've had no chance to learn what men can be, or how you yourself can feel.”

A curious smile flitted across Asia's eyes. Getting up suddenly, she walked to the window and looked out into the darkness. Her “sheltered life!” She smiled as she thought of it: of crude rapidly arrested scenes with Sonny Shoreman; of staggeringly sudden and unexpected caresses on the part of various men, a Kaiwaka curate, a surveyor, an English derelict working on the gum-fields, and others; and of her own adolescent passion for David Bruce, not yet out of her system.

All this Asia saw again as she stood by the window, and page 226 she felt that if there was anything she did not know about men it could only be something unexpectedly agreeable.

As she turned back to the fire Alice saw in her face that arrogant cocksureness of youth that so irritates the wisdom of age.

“If I am ever to marry, Mother,” she said, sitting down, “it seems to me I might as well know something about myself and men. Or perhaps you have me pigeon-holed as an old maid.” She did not mean to be scornful, but her mother resented her tone.

“Oh, well, it's useless my saying anything, I know. But you will learn.” She could not avoid superiority.

“That's what I'm going for, Mother. For God's sake, understand. You must have realized that I would go some day. Why do you put me in the wrong like this?”

But Alice was suffering too much now to unbend. All she wanted was the hard cold fact.

“How are you going to get the money to begin?”

“Uncle David is lending it to me.”

This was the unkindest cut of all. It looked like treachery.

“I see. And when do you go?”

“By the next boat, Mother.”

Alice rose abruptly, her face turned to stone. Ignoring Asia's appealing gesture, she walked proudly into her bedroom, and shut and locked the door. She never undressed or slept, or wept all night.

Asia sat on, slow tears dripping from her cheeks. After a while she stole out into the back garden, but as if powerless to move any further she leaned against the wash-house and sobbed helplessly.

As a late moon rose over Pukekaroro she walked to the side gate and leaned upon it looking at the mountain. He reminded her of the nights and early mornings, of the moonrises and the dawns when she and her mother, watching by sick or dying babies, had turned their faces together towards his inscrutable calm. She remembered the other things page 227 they had shared: how together they had looked for the spring's first golden glory on the kowhai trees; how together they had listened for the first tui's song, and rejoiced over the first violet; how together they had watched many red suns go down beyond the river gap; how together they had played and loved Beethoven.

And she knew that she more than any one else had always been there, like the impossible friend in the melodrama, always on the spot to share the good and the bad. And why could she not have kept on doing it for ever?

Why? Why?