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Hedged with Divinities

XV

page 102

XV.

Half mechanically he felt for the friendly cigarette case, and as he did so the figure near him rose and was about to pass him with a gentle inclination of the head. Jack struck a match and applied it to the end of his cigarette, the light for an instant falling on his face. A piercing shriek made him bound to his feet, and as he stepped towards his unknown companion he saw the slight figure reel as if to fall. Swiftly moving forward he passed his arm round the shoulders of the stranger, and as the hood fell back from her head it revealed the exquisite face of Nelly Farrell. Beside himself with joy and agitation he pressed kisses on the white face and on the lips that quickly grew warm to his. Then ensued such a scene of holy delight and passionate affection as it has seldom been the lot of the sea to witness, although it has seen many visions of parting and despair, of greeting and delight. Almost dumb with the intense satisfaction of love's bodily presence, they murmured and babbled, cooing little foolish words of endearment and inarticulate fondness; they

"Only saw the beautiful lips and fingers,
Full of songs and kisses and little whispers,
Full of music."

page 103

It was to them a resurrection of all that life held that was dear and valuable. Time slipped by, and then talk became more coherent, although naturally full of the "I love you, love you," and the "Do you love me?" which is the undying heritage of lovers' conversation through the centuries. At last Jack, spreading his cloak upon the ground, coaxed his new-found sweetheart to seat herself by his side. It needed some little coaxing, for, after all the yielding and abandon of the first delightful moments, there soon sprang up in Nelly's breast the reserve and shyness which a girl feels when she has been for a long time unused to a warm embrace, and perceives the "capture" feeling which haunts the fervid caresses of the masculine lover. Soon, however, she nestled gently to the protecting arm, and began to speak of the strange past.

"Tell me," said Jack, "how you have managed to hide yourself from me? All the time I have been here I have enquired high and low, and no one could tell me of you. I began to think that you must have managed to reach some other place, although they assured me that all the women of the province were gathered here, and I know that you could not have gone through to Taranaki or Wellington. How is it that, when you heard that I had survived, and even had been made kiug, that you did not fly to my side? You must have known my longing and dreadful anxiety."

"Oh! Jack," said Nelly, "you don't know my trouble; I had forgotten it in the joy of meeting you; but—oh! Jack—my mother—my dear mother—" and she began sobbing bitterly. Jack tried to comfort her and appease her grief, and when she had sufficiently recovered to resume with something like calmness, she continued—"My mother died only last week, and I page 104knew little of what was going on in the outside world; I could think of nothing but her illness, and then of her death. I was allowed to stay and nurse her in her extremity, so did not go out with the parties of working women."

"Tell me," said Jack, "how was it that you left home? I wandered through the dear old house in absolute despair and fear, not knowing or able to understand what had happened to myself or others."

Nelly then went on to tell him of her having left her betrothed in the care of the old priest, and of her return to her mother's house. "The next morning our two men left with some of the stock which had to be driven to the township, and then they should have returned with some store-cattle. I should have gone to the Maori settlement to learn more about the old man in whose care I had left you, but I could not leave my mother, because she would have been all alone. We waited through the next day and the men did not return; we thought that they must have got drunk, although they were usually very steady men, but when another day passed we began to get anxious. On the third day, just after breakfast, Rhoda Palgrave (do you remember her at the picnic?) came riding up as fast as her horse could gallop. She was very white and looked terrified. She told us that her father and brothers were dead, and all the men on the country side also. She entreated us to leave at once and go with her and the others to Auckland. We could not believe her; mother and I stared at one another in absolute dismay, thinking that Rhoda had been deranged and escaped from a bed of fever or delusion of some kind. But she gave us so many details that conviction came to us, and we decided to go.

page 105

My heart was torn in two directions, for my own dear boy was lying ill in the care of an old savage up at the Humming House, and I begged my mother and Rhoda to wait while I got a guide at the Maori village and went to seek you. I called to Netta (you remember my pretty mare, Jack?) and she came running up to me. I saddled her and rode to the Kainga to get a guide. To my horror it was deserted! The houses were fastened up and the slip-rails lashed. There were no fires lighted, and the place was empty of living beings. I became half crazed with wondering what to do, for when we had carried you up through the bush, my thoughts had been so full of anxiety for your almost dying state, that I had not taken notice of the way we went. I rode here and there for a time like a mad thing, indeed I began to act like a poor fellow lost in the bush, when he begins to circle, but I suddenly recollected that I was losing my senses, and pursued by this fear I turned and gallopped back to the house. Rhoda and I rounded up the buggy horses; we put a little food in the trap and started, thinking that we could get supplies of food from farms on the way. Oh! the horrors of that journey, the dreadful, dreadful, time! We could not go near a house on the road but there we saw some sight that pierced the heart. The sun was bright overhead, but death was everywhere underneath. When we got to Auckland the place was like a pest house and lunatic asylum combined. We had a few noble women amongst us, indeed, noble is a slight and petty word for bravery like theirs. They implored, they threatened, they worked, till they got a number of others to undertake the task of burying the dead bodies. We could not dig graves; the blistered hands and feeble arms soon gave in, but in all the page 106carts we could muster we carried the bodies to a steep gully and then broke down the sides of the hill on them. When most of this horrible work was done our leaders had utterly collapsed with toil and exhaustion, and things have drifted on from that time till now. Mother and I lived somehow or other until lately, when"——Here she again began to weep. On becoming calm she told Jack that she had lately heard that one man had been discovered, but that, however interested she might have been at another time, she was then so full of her own numbing sorrow that she took no interest in the news, believing that her lover had died years before. "But now," she said, "I have you again darling, and you will take care of me for always and always, won't you? and you will make the sunshine come back, and we will see and love the flowers again. The world can never be so dark and hopeless now, there will be love in it, if it is only for us two and for"—— She stopped suddenly as some thought passed through her mind which made the cheek laid against that of her lover burn hot in the darkness. "Oh," she resumed, "perhaps when you see me by daylight you won't love me Jack; I have got white threads in my hair with all the sorrow and trouble."

"Silver or bronze, it is just as dear to me," Jack replied, pressing his lips gently to his sweetheart's tresses. Then followed words of infinite tenderness and sympathy, soft sentences that soothed her like a charm, and, as the low murmurs fell gently on her ears, she yielded the final proof of love and trust by falling softly asleep in his embrace. The proof of love, because "home," "love," and "peace" are of some unknown but perfect kinship, although their outward attributes may vary and be strange.

page 107

"Poor suffering child," mused Jack as he looked down on the sleeping face, it is beauty made infantile by its position and spiritual in the lunar pallor. "What a wonder of wonders is this! Here as we sit, the man guarding the woman in the night, we are an emblem of all that has developed humanity from the germ which also held 'the life of the worm and the fly,' and with us two is not only the emblem of the past, but the actual potency of the race in an endless unimaginable future. Sleep on, light of my soul and hope of the world!"