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  Margaret literally quaked with doubt as to how he would receive her, though she would not keep away. She was afraid of him. He was formidable. He might do anything in one of those turbulent gusts of passion. She saw now how easily, with what utter disregard, he had taken a terrible risk last night. Her ruination with all its appalling consequences had been nothing to him. But he met her properly: just walked to the rail fence, taking his pipe from his pocket as he came.

  She spoke first. She said: “You are breaking the bay foal. What possessed you to undertake it?”

  He smiled at her. He could not help it. In the brilliant sunshine she stood among the dirty pens like a tall white lily. Rona’s dusky skin, her ungraceful, incongruously clothed big body and bare primitive feet set off Margaret’s daintiness, her exquisite toilette, the glorious beauty of her dark fairness.

  Glengarry, though not at all artistic, really much of the average man, appreciated the distinction of the picture they made: the dressed-up primitive against the finished product of civilisation.

  Had he really held that creature in his arms? Had he really dared to reduce her to the level of vulgar mortals? That sense of sacrilege again. In his mind he did obeisance before her. The humility of his soul was complete for a moment. How he cursed Rona’s presence! Before her he must assume a snivelling attitude of convention when his every fibre ached just to look at this woman with his love made manifest; just to look at the sheen of hers; of her dress so wonderfully simple that even he knew it for a masterpiece; of her hair so elaborately piled upon her head, with its tiny kiss curls fluttering upon her brow.

  He took a grip upon himself. He realised that he must use himself to her presence if he were to remain near her. He realised now, as she did, the appalling nature of his passion and the risk it had subjected her to the night before. Was he to ruin that delightful creature, who was Womanhood incarnate? who was great enough to have preserved her natural self unsoiled; to rise out of the soilure of man-made laws with the purity of her soul unbesmirched.

  Glengarry was no superman. It has been said that he was pretty average. But he was a man, with a well-developed intelligence and clean instincts. He was experienced, too. His taciturn observation of men and women had left him few illusions. Corruption and vice, even potential, did not easily hide from him. Nor did innocence and moral rectitude. He had not imagined that a woman like Margaret could exist in the common world of men and women. A woman matured, intelligent, curious, even inquisitive, and the mother of four children, yet innocent. Not ignorant at all. Aware through much reading of the fundamentals of life, of sin and shame and disease and corruption in most of its aspects, yet innocent; yet able to swim with the natural tide of her emotions without one carking thought.

  But then she had not lived in a world of common men and women. That must be the explanation. All last night Glengarry had pondered the, to him, insoluble, as personified in her. He knew that she was good. That fact it was that crucified him. Not one sign had he seen or sensed in her of the corruption that he would gladly have found as excuse for his outrage. He knew. What was she then? And the only answer his tortured heart could find was: Natural woman.

  He was spared an immediate answer to her question by an interruption from Rona who declared that she would have to go home to prepare her dinner. The two stood and watched her go off with the bitch and puppies until she disappeared beneath the rim of a hollow, and then Glengarry leaned upon the railings and answered: “He is worth breaking. More than worth it.”

  They continued to talk of the horse, though neither was the least bit interested in the animal. “You are very patient,” from Margaret, with soft glances and blushing cheeks.

  “Necessary,” from him, fiercely responding.

  “He is handsome, don’t you think?” from her, edging a little closer to him.

  “I do,” from him, looking furtively around. “Better be careful.”

  “Careful. Why?”

  “Those fellows.” Nodding towards the sheds. “One never knows.”

  “You are gross and vulgar.” Margaret stepped back, chagrined and disappointed.

  He looked at her curiously. “How so?”

  She threw out her hands, a characteristic gesture when disdainful. “Those fellows. My ‘hands.’ “

  “Messenger’s ‘hands,’ too, don’t forget,” he said with his brutal frankness. “Their tongues would be the more venomous because of the fact that they are your ‘hands.’ “

  “What nonsense! They are all my friends.”

  He laughed shortly. “Haven’t you been living in the world at all? You’re as innocent as—as—as you look,” he finished.

  A delighted scream from small Margaret, who had caught sight of her mother from the top of the railing fence, disturbed them. Margaret turned at once in the child’s direction and waved an arm. “Bless the child! She will fall in a minute. There!” She forgot Glengarry and started off at a swift run, for the child had toppled headfirst into the pen and was giving vent to her fright and hurt in shrill screaming.

  Glengarry looked after her with sombre eyes and compressed lips. What might come of this illicit love of theirs? What could come of it? Whatever the woman liked, he thought savagely. He would not consider Messenger.

  He anticipated Messenger’s return. Well, he knew about that right enough. That would be the end of it one way or the other. She would be his or Messenger’s; never the mate of both. A man could never stand that. No mite of pity for the other man touched him. The mere thought of another man in connection with her maddened him. It was all or nothing with him. For an instant he thought of his young wife; he wondered about the prelude to her breakaway—with a Chinaman; but threw memory of her away with disgust.

  He had very little money, this Glengarry. This job at Maunganui offered to be the first big job he had obtained, chiefly owing to the tenacity with which he had stuck to the southern part of the country where the holdings were mostly small and therefore were managed by their owners. The Southland was so akin to his native heath; its climate bore the chills and mists of Scotland; and in Dunedin, the clean sweet city of the south, was his native Edinburgh reincarnated. He was as true a Scot as ever stepped off the heather, and only the necessity of his loved mother’s failing health had brought him north in search of the sun.

  Maunganui was an ideal abiding place for his mother. He had been immensely contented at his luck in securing the job, and the old lady had greatly benefited by the change already. He felt a swift pang of poignant regret at the turn affairs had taken. He had little money. Did Margaret elect to leave with him—

  He was conventional. He knew his mother to be strait-laced as a Puritan. Such a thing would destroy her. He stood in the dust of the pen and suffered horribly. It would destroy her. Sheer decency made him livid with horror. He wiped the sweat from his face with his hand, leaving grimy marks. He shivered in the hot sunlight. Well, he would not destroy his mother. Messenger would not be home for some weeks; let things take their course, and when the situation became unbearable he would clear out. Perhaps this love would cool down; perhaps he could exhaust it by excess. God! No! Not with her! She was fatal. How she bloomed under it! Had she lied when she told him that she had never known love before? Of course not. She could not lie.

  How beautiful she was! Oh, how incomparably beautiful!

  CHAPTER XIV

  Margaret thought a lot about Messenger’s return, but without alarm. Not with joyousness, of course, but with loyal fairness she fought away unworthy wishes.

  Unlike Glengarry, she felt no regret at the turn affairs had taken, because, unlike him again, she had no thought of depriving Messenger of anything. Truly, the possibility of loss to Messenger because of her love did not occur to her. She would have shrunk with horror from the thought. Barry still ranked supreme in her estimation. This new man was her lover, but his attitude towards their love had at once placed him inferior to Barry. Love, to her simple naturalness, was a transcendent thing broo
king no consideration of such things as station “hands.”

  She accepted the fact that the man was of a piece with the world he knew and lived in. She gave his vulgarity contemptuous toleration, even saw the expediency of his attitude; but nevertheless she inevitably made comparisons with the result that Glengarry suffered. Barry and she dwelt together equals. Though Margaret had never consciously told herself of her utter trustworthiness, the whole fabric of her was saturated with the essence of the thing itself. “To let a person down,” as she would have expressed it in her own boyish way, was the unpardonable and unthinkable crime.

  Messenger was pure. He was the last word in trustworthiness. In the disagreements the two had had, in the quarrels, hearty enough sometimes, which had embroidered the early years of their married life, neither had failed the other. In the pettiest of things as in the the big issues of their life together each had found the other dependable. Disagreement and quarrels there might be, but never even a bordering on the unworthy. Margaret would have veritably staked her life with a laugh on Barry’s probity, and, had she considered the matter, she would have known the same of him in regard to her.

  But Glengarry had, to her simple though true intuitions, shown a canker at the core. He had done wrong. He had transgressed his own code of honour. Not one carking thought had she had regarding the right or wrong of this love affair of theirs, once her physical weakness had betrayed her into his arms. Her kind was such that had she believed him to have wronged her she would have killed him—or herself. She could not have survived the realisation that she had “let a man down.” This, to her, was not a question of honour but of nature. Natural laws transcended man’s. Why, but for this man’s coming she would have gone through life unknowing the ecstasies of love’s communion. Men were not so barbarous, surely, that they would deny to a woman that knowledge and experience? Would Barry be so barbarous as to deny her the fullness of life he had known himself?

  For she knew that this love and ecstasy she enjoyed with Glengarry was the same emotion she had wondered at in Barry himself in his union with her. She realised the pity of it from Barry’s point of view. How wonderful for them both if she had responded to her husband instead of to this new man who resembled Barry so in appearance and manner! But one could only take what life offered. That was, so long as one took without pain to others. Any other acceptance did not occur to her.

  The canker she saw in Glengarry impressed her fairly. He was not utterly dependable. His actions could not be anticipated. She saw the possibility in him of “letting her down,” or Barry, which came to the same thing with her.

  She thought continually of Barry’s return, therefore, even though without alarm. She would not renounce Glengarry. That was too much; it would destroy her. But they must be secretive. She hated that. It was abominable, but Barry must be preserved from pain and the children must be considered. Her bonny bairns must lose nothing whatever to supply their mother’s want. She was not gross, this Margaret. Newly awakened to love’s fervour, she must necessarily appreciate it, but more than the sex-embrace by far to her was the loved one’s presence.

  Of course she did not take the man himself enough into account. If necessary, she would content herself with his nearness, with his daily companionship. To have him at her table, within her sight, would satisfy her if necessary, though there would surely arise occasions when they could be alone. (Barry would often travel now.)

  She did not think, during these soliloquies of hers, that the man was made of quite different stuff.

  She was not frightened of Barry knowing. She had no fear of him misunderstanding, though the subject of marital infidelity had never been discussed by them. But instinctively she knew that the knowledge would mean terrible suffering for him. She knew that his only thought would be of self-sacrifice.

  The weather held fine day after day, so that it was easy enough for her to meet Glengarry at one or other of the thick copses that were scattered among the hills of Maunganui. The secrecy never became less hateful to her, but so glamorous was her time of love that she pushed all thought of the obnoxious thing away. Her love was all-powerful. She longed to be for ever at his side. She bloomed entrancingly. Love fulfilled its mission and drew out the richness of her personality until she was in love with all mankind. Her health improved. Her pale skin glowed with life. Her strong body took on new vigour. So gracious was her demeanour to all around her that her small world was at her feet.

  Glengarry’s spirit wilted before her. Instead of exhaustion his love flamed higher, though he learned to keep some sort of control over it. Her attitude towards her children intrigued and maddened him. There seemed no limit to her bounty. He was jealous of the children, of her pride in them and her care and thought for them. She talked to him about the children as though they were his, and decency compelled him to meet her on that ground. Small Margaret added him to her list of heroes, and indeed all the children liked him.

  He was torn with conflicting emotions. Margaret never guessed at what the taciturn, dour Scotsman was going through. She suckled her baby each evening before him, most modestly, but still she did it, and at such times the anguish of his spirit, clamouring for fatherhood of her children, almost wrecked him. His health suffered. Matter fell before the onslaughts of the mind; as she gathered physical strength he lost it.

  And he knew that Tutaki suspected. He knew that Margaret was too guileless. He was jealous of Tutaki too. At times he thought that he would go mad, and almost hoped for Messenger’s return so the thing could be settled one way or the other. Yet he would not allow Margaret to talk of Barry’s return. She thought he was boorish when mostly it was fear that bade him tie her tongue.

  She saw that the matter must be discussed and some readjustment made. So did he, but he was frightened to face the issue. He could not blind himself to her attitude of mind, though it was unexpressed. “By and by,” he would say impatiently when she mentioned it.

  Then came a telegram one day. The house party were at tea when Margaret was called to the telephone. Telegrams were always forwarded from Taihape in that manner.

  Barry would arrive home on the morrow, which was a Saturday. Margaret bravely pretended to herself that she was glad. She walked back to the dining-room slowly, and on opening the door immediately said: “Daddy will be home to-morrow, children.”

  An outcry of delight from the little ones, especially from small Margaret.

  Margaret sat down and for an instant her eyes met Glengarry’s. She was shocked. His face was white, his eyes were pitiful. She had a mad impulse to rush to him and comfort him. She half rose. Tutaki, who always sat on her right, leant over and tapped her arm with a finger. “Some more ham, please, Lady,” he said softly, but his eyes were cold as ice.

  She fell back and recovered herself, met his eyes squarely and—lied. “I left my handkerchief at the phone,” she said, helped him to some ham, and then left the room for an instant, returning with her handkerchief in her hand.

  As soon as the meal was finished Tutaki took up his cap. Usually he played with the children for a while after tea. “Come for a walk, Glengarry?” he asked casually.

  Margaret looked up, startled. It was the first time Jimmy had evinced any desire for the manager’s company.

  Glengarry was glad to say “Yes.” He was in agony. Not until the blow had fallen had he realised what Messenger’s return would mean to him. To-morrow she would be the other man’s. That awful tearing flame at his heart! His stomach had turned to water. He felt like a doddering old man. He was sick. He rested his head on his hand, half shielding his face. An excuse to get away! To master that awful sickness in his stomach. “Yes, I’ll come,” he answered Tutaki, and left the room through the window without glancing at the woman.

  That upset her. She trembled with dread. What, oh what would happen? Something here she could not fathom. Jealousy? What did she know of jealousy outside the pages of novels? No faintest breath of it had reached her world. She took up her
babe, as usual, but her spirits sank lower as the minutes passed by and Glengarry did not return. The last evening, and at ten o’clock he had not returned.

  All but she were soundly sleeping at nine. She sat in a big armchair with a book in her lap, trying vainly to read. Surely he would come the last night. Other nights her difficulty had been to restrain him. But he saw her there waiting for him. He stood on the lawn among the shrubs watching her and fighting. His soul had withered before the scorn in Tutaki’s voice and bearing; he had writhed before the contempt of the brown man. To be despised by “a bloody nigger!” The phrase came to his lips repeatedly. He cared nothing for Tutaki’s threat. “Every man on the station loves her. I worship the ground she walks on. Messenger only lives for her, and Messenger is my friend. Keep away. She is only a child, really. I know her. If you bring trouble on her I’ll put a bullet through you. By the Holy Christ I swear it!”

  So Tutaki had spoken. Bravely, Glengarry knew, for his great strength could have beaten the life from the slim brown man without effort. With the threat Tutaki had left him. They had been standing among the cattle pens.

  And he had then walked. Anywhere, everywhere, trying to bring order out of the chaos of his thoughts. He had to decide something. He saw through Tutaki’s eyes the unworthiness of the course he had decided on. He laughed grimly at the idea of “a nigger” influencing him. Really it was not Tutaki, but the conventions and reasons laid bare to him by Tutaki that influenced him. After a time his thoughts became ordered enough for him to realise the bedrock issue and face it. He was conventional. Margaret was not. She was natural. He saw that she would accept what to her was the inevitable, and go on with her life on the station sharing with him whatever luck circumstances might afford them. And she would lose not one jot of her mental and moral beauty. Surely she was the most glorious woman in the world! A wonder woman! He thought of her queenly attitudes, of body and of mind; the exquisite bounty of her love, tendered to him always with the same shy, charming dignity that could emanate only from a sense of righteousness.