Song of the Spirits (16 page)

“Elaine will get over it.”

Fleurette heard those words again and again over the next few weeks. William’s departure was the talk of the town, of course. Although Elaine had been the only witness to his shared caresses with Kura, several customers and employees had heard rumors. And people, especially the women, were able to put two and two together, at least when the Canterbury Plains were mentioned and with Gwyneira and Kura Warden leaving on practically the same day. Elaine hardly dared go into town, though Fleurette reminded her that she had nothing to be ashamed of. Most people were rather sympathetic. The older citizens of Queenstown had not envied Elaine her suitor, and there
were not many respectable girls her own age around who would savor gossip about her bad luck. Nevertheless, Elaine cried unceasingly. She hid herself away in her room and sobbed as if she would never stop.

“What goes around comes around,” Daphne said when Helen told her what had happened over tea.

Elaine no longer greeted new guests at the reception desk, and she had stopped helping out in the store. If she was not crying, she wandered the woods with her horse and her dog. Unavoidably, she went past places she had been with William—picnic sites, spots where they had kissed, and so on—with the result that she inevitably broke down in tears again.

“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.