The Toll of the Bush

Front matter

THE TOLL OF THE BUSH

THE TOLL OF THE BUSH

THE

On the Road to the Section

CHAPTER I

ON THE ROAD TO THE SECTION

At that point, and for the next fifty miles, the Great North Road was a sea of mud, but the travellers paid small attention to the fact, and it was only when their horses’ legs sank suddenly through a broken culvert that they made remarks uncomplimentary to the County Council and the Government. The horses said nothing, but there was a sufficient reason for that. They plodded along steadily, their noses down, their heels sucking at monotonous intervals out of the yellow clay. The track they followed was that of the horses which had gone before them, and it was churned up to the consistency, and much of the colour, of butter in summer-time. It led them sometimes into the middle of the road, sometimes—especially if there were a deep ditch there—along the extreme edge, and the only consistency it showed was in going to spots which the riders, for their part, would rather have avoided.

The men rode in single file, the man in front talking back over his shoulder to the one behind him. Now and then the nature of the road permitted them to range up alongside, but this was seldom. Behind them, on a neck of land jutting out into the broad tidal river, lay the township—a handful of white wooden buildings—shut in, save where cut by the roadway, by an impenetrable sea of scrub. A steamer lay alongside the wharf, the throb of a winch floating up through the chill air of the wintry afternoon. A few cows grazed outside the Court House. These were the sole evidences of activity. The steamer was an excitement which repeated itself—weather permitting—once a fortnight throughout the year, and affected the destinies of the people for fifty miles around. The cows were constant—except at milking-time, when they had to be sought for in the scrub, usually standing perfectly still until discovered by an irate owner and driven off recalcitrant to a half-starved calf.

The men were both young, the elder not more than twenty-eight, and the other scarcely yet come to manhood. There was a likeness between them which betrayed some relationship, though this was rather in indefinable characteristics than in actual resemblance, the elder brother’s face possessing a beauty and restlessness of spirit which were lacking in the simpler, yet more forceful countenance of the younger. The face of the man in front was for the moment clouded and gloomy, while that of the younger brother wore an apologetic expression.

‘Couldn’t see his way?’ said the elder brother, with a short laugh. ‘He’s like ourselves, then. What else did he say?’

‘Said he’d got a lot of money out he never expected to see again. The natives had gone through him for four or five hundred, and that there was close on three hundred owing in the settlement alone. Said he’d put the wire in at a trifle over cost if we could manage to pay cash. He’s not a bad sort, Geoffrey.’

Geoffrey was silent awhile. Then he said, ‘I ought to have gone myself. You can’t get credit without lying, and you’re a poor hand at it, Robert.’

‘I just said what you told me,’ replied Robert slowly. ‘Only when he came to talk back it looked different somehow, and—I’m not clever like you, Geoff.’

The words were simply spoken, and free from intent, but the elder brother laughed as though he saw something suggestive about them.

‘We’ll just have to go on blasting out rails,’ he said presently. ‘My God! how sick I am of the whole business. Is there any hope for the wretched country at all? Look at it!’ he continued with a sudden angry scorn,—‘clay and scrub and precipices, with here and there an acre of orchard, and all the plagues of Egypt domiciled in it. What’s the good of going on?’

‘I was looking at Thomas’s place,’ said Robert ponderingly, ‘when I was up there with the cricket team last Christmas. It must have looked like this twenty years ago. It’s green enough now.’

‘And you can look forward twenty years? Yet after all, why not? It’s better than looking back. They have electric railways in England now, but when Queen Elizabeth lived they were probably content with roads no better than this.’

‘Is she dead?’ asked Robert, relieved at the sudden change of subject.

Geoffrey started and laughed; then a flush deepened in his cheek, and he muttered, ‘What a damned shame!’ and thereafter jogged along in silence.

The road wound gradually upwards round the hillsides, presenting a clay bank on one hand, and a steep, scrub-covered slope on the other. Down in the hollow the river lay like a silver octopus, its tentacles stretching far into the black bush-covered lands. Here and there were clearings, dwarfed into insignificance by the immensity of the virgin landscape from which they had been hewn. Some were black from a recent burn, others vividly green with the newly sown grass; in their midst slab or weatherboard huts marked the abodes of the pioneers. The river itself was deserted—not a boat or sail was visible, and save for a pair of black swans drifting in with the tide there was no sign of moving life within the compass of the horizon.

Geoffrey’s eye scanned the scene as he moved forward. ‘Poor devils!’ he said presently, ‘working their hearts out, and for what? What we want here is an army. Why are there not armies of peace as of war? Man’s the most astonishing kind of fool, if you come to reflect upon his ways. He could land an army corps here, and for an amount no greater than it costs to keep the beggars in idleness, convert the wilderness into a garden where men could live contentedly.’

‘Perhaps some day he will think of that,’ said Robert.

Reaching the brow of the hill, the tea-tree came to an end, and they began to descend through mixed bush, the road rapidly degenerating into a quagmire as they proceeded. Here and there fascines of tea-tree bridged the more rotten places, and for a chain or so at a dark turn of the road rough slabs took the place of the tea-tree and slush. At length the winding track turned suddenly out of the bush, and beneath them, at the bottom of a steep slope, lay a green valley bathed in sunlight. Low scrub-covered hills walled it in; beyond rose great bush-clad ranges, sharply outlined against the silvery sky.

Like pilgrims gazing on the Promised Land, the men scanned the scene, as their horses ploughed and floundered down the muddy slope. In the centre of the green plain was a group of white buildings, surrounded by a hedge of macrocarpa. Maori children were pouring out of a gate in the hedge and scattering themselves over the valley, the sound of their voices rising sharply through the still air. Large tracts of the green sward were unfenced, and over these strayed the cattle and horses of the native community. Along the sides of the road, and back in fenced paddocks, stood a number of unpainted weatherboard huts and rakish-looking whares, the edges of their palm-thatched roofs torn into fibres by the wind. Here and there was a storehouse built on piles, or a steep palm roof rising from the ground, and probably sheltering the kumara or sweet-potato pits. The only signs of cultivation were the bleached maize stems of the previous season. Old fruit-trees—chiefly peach, quince, and fig—grouped themselves at various points. Cattle, horses, pigs, dogs, fowls, ducks roamed everywhere through the broken fences at their own sweet will.

‘If one had a place like this now,’ said Geoffrey, reining in his horse, ‘it might be possible to do something. It seems to me that the only land worth having in this north country is in the hands of the natives.’

‘They were here first, I suppose?’ Robert said.

‘Yes, that is a good argument so far as it goes, but meantime the white men are sitting round on the hills eating grass, and the country is at a standstill. If this sort of thing were happening just outside Wellington, it would not be tolerated for longer than was necessary for the framing of an Act to put an end to it, but the justice of the case is not affected by the fact that we are a long way from the seat of government and unable to make ourselves heard.’

‘The rails will be better in the long run,’ Robert said, reverting to the original subject of discussion. ‘There’s plenty of good timber, and it’s only just the difference of a month or so in getting it out. Of course, if you’re set on doing the fencing right off there is no trouble about it—Major Milward will give us all the credit we want, and—there is Uncle Geoffrey.’

Geoffrey’s brows contracted and he shifted his seat in the saddle. ‘We will get out the rails,’ he said shortly.

At the foot of the hill the ground became unexpectedly solid, and the horses, pricking up their ears, scampered gleefully forward.

‘Shall we see about the ploughing?’ Robert shouted, as they galloped round the bend by the schoolhouse, and came abreast of a low Maori whare.

Geoffrey reined in his horse, and turning from the road, jumped the broken fence, and pulled up at the open doorway.

A young native girl, with dishevelled hair, came out at the sound of his approach and stood regarding them, rubbing the sandflies off one leg with the toes of the other.

‘Pine in?’ Geoffrey asked.

The girl turned and called to some one in the interior in a shrill voice. There was a rustling inside, and presently a native appeared, yawning and rubbing his eyes. He was an intensely ugly, good-humoured-looking man of some thirty years. His clothing consisted of a pair of tattered trousers and a faded and dirty singlet, which had long since parted company with its buttons. He looked at his visitors, said ‘Hullo’ in a sleepy voice, and leaned against the doorpost.

‘Lazy beggar!’ said Geoffrey, smiling. ‘Why aren’t you tilling the soil?’

‘Too soon to tirr him yet,’ replied Pine; ‘nex’ mont’ prenty nuff time.’

‘Now’s the time for me. I want you to come over and plough up a few acres for the potatoes.’

‘I tink dis time too soon for taters. More better by’m-by.’

‘Well, we’ll chance that. When can you come?’

Pine turned the question over in his mind. ‘My burrock up te bush tese times,’ he said at length, with a prodigious yawn. ‘I not seen. P’r’aps tree days I find him. You got any prough up to your place?’

Geoffrey nodded and gathered up the reins. ‘Well, I’ll look for you on Thursday then,’ he said; ‘and mind, no humbug. I want the thing done before you start working the bullocks to death on your own account.’

Pine laughed boisterously. ‘How many acres you tink?’ he asked.

‘About three,’ said Robert; ‘it won’t take you long.’

‘All ri’; p’r’aps I come Wensday.’ He pulled a pipe from his belt, thrust a finger into the interior, and then began to search his pockets, uttering little clicks of astonishment. Geoffrey threw him the remains of a plug of tobacco, which he caught dexterously and proceeded to cut up.

‘New parson here little before time,’ he said. ‘Kapai dat chap mo te korero. Ah, te pest!’

‘Good talker, is he?’ asked Geoffrey, pausing on the point of wheeling his horse.

‘All the same te saw-mill,’ said Pine; ‘very big soun’.’ He laid his hand suddenly on the girl’s head. ‘Aha, my ch-eild! Poh! poh!’

The girl ducked under his arm, and dived into the interior of the whare.

‘He’s like that, is he?’ said Geoffrey. Then he smiled and added, ‘Yes, I’ve heard of him.’

‘Te big rangatira that,’ said Pine admiringly, taking a slow and stately step from one doorpost to the other. ‘Poh! poh! I tink very soon now all the people go to church a good deal.’

‘Shouldn’t wonder,’ said Geoffrey.

Pine filled his pipe and lit it. ‘You tink dat ferra the big rangatira?’ he asked, fixing his dark eyes on Geoffrey.

‘All parsons are rangatiras, you know,’ Geoffrey responded lightly.

Pine squatted down in the doorway and blew a fragrant tobacco cloud. ‘Yes’day,’ he said, ‘I come roun’ Major Milward’s place up to Wairangi. I see te new parson on a beach, walk up an’ down with Iwi, how you call Eve. I tink very soon dat te pair.’

Geoffrey was gazing moodily at some object across the valley, but he appeared to have heard. ‘What makes you think so?’ he asked idly.

Pine continued to watch him with undisguised curiosity. ‘I come on a little way,’ he continued. ‘I see Sandy an’ I say to him, “By’m-by your sister marry te pakeha?” “Oh, go to hell!” say Sandy. Dat why I tink.’

‘Then because Sandy told you to go to hell you argue that his sister is about to marry a parson,’ Geoffrey remarked with a wry smile.

‘Dat why,’ said Pine confidently. ‘If Sandy laugh, den p’r’aps yes, p’r’aps no, but Sandy angry, I say to myself, “Aha!”’

Geoffrey lifted his eyebrows slightly, then with a curt good-night turned his horse for the road. Robert stayed a moment to renew the subject of the ploughing, then set out after his brother.

The sun was setting in the gap above the river, and the sky to the eastward showed signs of darkening. Geoffrey was already far ahead, flying along rapidly through the shifting shadows. Robert set his horse in motion, but it was not until he had left the confines of the valley and reached the muddy road that wound through the gap, that he again caught up with Geoffrey. The latter acknowledged his arrival by a glance over his shoulder, and they jogged along in silence in single file as before. The road deteriorated rapidly as they descended the other side of the cutting, finally striking an unbridged creek, where the flood waters roared up to the saddle flaps. From this point an ascent of half a mile brought them to the brow of the hill overlooking the river. There was still a glimmer of twilight, revealing dimly the slab huts of the settlers, the rigid arms of fire-blackened trees, extended as though in a sort of mad frenzy at the fate which had overtaken them, outlined here and there against the river.

There was a sound as of distant thunder that never died away—the roar of the surf on the bar at the river mouth.

The Brothers

CHAPTER II

THE BROTHERS

The home of Geoffrey and Robert Hernshaw was a weatherboard shell, divided into three rooms by rough wooden partitions. It possessed a brick fireplace and chimney—one of the two contained in the settlement—and was further remarkable in having three windows and being floored throughout. The furniture was scanty, comprising nothing but the barest necessaries. There were two stretchers in the bedroom, a table, a few wooden chairs and some cooking utensils in the kitchen. The third room, which also contained a stretcher, appeared to be used for the storage of anything not immediately required in the other parts of the house. The main door opened direct into the kitchen, and the first thing likely to strike a visitor was the fact that the opening of the door caused the chimney to smoke violently.

The smell of recent cooking had not quite left the kitchen. A Rochester lamp stood on the table. Robert was seated on a box in a corner scraping a few pieces of gum, which had turned up in the process of digging a vegetable garden. Occasionally he looked thoughtfully at his brother, who was moving restlessly about the small room, giving vent now and then to a smothered exclamation as though his thoughts were too many for him.

‘You never opened that last English paper, Geoff,’ he said at last.

‘Didn’t I?’ and Geoffrey coming to a standstill looked absently at his brother; then he resumed his restless movements.

‘It’s over there in the corner, under the oatmeal,’ Robert said presently.

Geoffrey looked hazily in the direction indicated, then crossed over, pulled the paper from its resting-place, and tearing it open sat resolutely down at the table, and glared steadfastly at a picture purporting to portray a minor incident in the Boer war. He was still staring at it when, a quarter of an hour later, Robert, having finished his gum, came to look over his shoulder. Geoffrey turned a few pages hurriedly and found a fresh picture.

‘“Re-inforcements leaving South-ampton,”’ read Robert slowly. ‘That’s London, I suppose.’

Geoffrey paused before replying, and there was something of irritation in his voice as he answered: ‘Your admiration for London rather carries you away, Robert. That city does not embrace the whole of England. If you could really grasp the fact that London is the capital of England and not vice versa, that would be a step towards the understanding of many things at present concealed from you. And, by the way, Elizabeth is dead.’

‘Elizabeth?’

‘You remember my alluding to Queen Elizabeth and your asking me whether she was dead. She has been dead, as a matter of fact, about three hundred years.’

Robert sat down. ‘It’s a good job there was no one about when I asked you,’ he said, with an uneasy laugh. ‘But it’s not exactly my fault that I am so ignorant. I don’t think that I ever really had time to learn things. There was always something: what with father being sick and that—and no money in the house most times, except the bit I was able to pick up.’

Geoffrey let his hand fall on his brother’s. ‘I am a brute,’ he said, flushing. ‘Every word you say is true and a thousand more. God forgive me, old chap; you are worth a hundred such wretches as I! I have had all the good things of life and made nothing of them, while you have had to remain content with the crumbs.’ He rose and resumed his pacing of the room. ‘If there were any way of escape,’ he muttered. ‘Is this to go on all our lives? For that’s the devil of it—in a few years we shall cease to care, like every one else. Look at the beggars up in the township. A lot of young-old men, half of them bachelors, living a life of drift and satisfied. If I am to be content with such a life I should prefer to die now, while the lust for something better is gnawing my heart out. Are you content with the prospect?’ he asked suddenly, facing his brother.

Robert looked ponderingly at the wall in front of him. ‘I was telling you about Thomas’s place,’ he said slowly; ‘but that’s not the only one, and they all say the same thing. They stuck to it year after year, and the life was hard, there’s no denying, but in the end they—got—there.’

‘I see,’ said Geoffrey, seating himself and watching his brother’s face.

‘There was Major Milward,’ Robert resumed, in the same slow, calculating manner, as though possessed of an anxiety to say what was in his thoughts to the best of his ability; ‘he used to tell me about it during the three years I was working for him before you came out. It was fifty years ago that he built his first whare on the sand-bank where he lives now. It is a long time, but in fifty years you would be no older than he is now. He didn’t have a great deal of money—just a few hundreds. He got hold of things slowly—kauri bushes and that, and every now and then he put in a few trees, and branded a few calves, and added a room or two to the house. He kept on growing, and it didn’t take as long as I said—not by a generation; he’s been a rich man longer’n we’ve been alive. Yes, and he’s given away more’n we’ve ever owned besides. And he’s lived well and had the best of everything up from Auckland—wine and that; and he’s been home in England, and most of his family have been there, and I guess he’s got enough left to do all our fencing at one pop, and the bank ’ld never notice he’d done it. Yet I’m not saying fifty years isn’t a terrible time to look forward to,’ he concluded a little lamely, turning an apologetic glance from the wall to the other’s face.

Geoffrey sat watching him in a sort of fascination, and for awhile nothing was said.

Robert, if he had expected an outbreak, was perhaps agreeably surprised when Geoffrey’s next remark showed his thoughts to have slipped into another channel.

‘There’s that box of books in the other room. It’s a pity we can’t put up a few shelves for them—or would it be better to wait till the place is lined?’

‘The rain does leak through the walls some when the wind’s blowing; but perhaps the corner by the fireplace would do as it is.’

Geoffrey rose, measured the corner with his eye, glanced at one or two other possible positions for the library, then lit a candle and went away into the storeroom.

The place was in great disorder, and bore the appearance of having had its contents pitched in through a doorway only sufficiently opened to effect that object, and Geoffrey’s new-born enthusiasm was slightly damped by the spectacle. However, he set down the light, took off his coat, and looked resolutely about him. The box he was in search of stood in one corner, and had been used as a suitable spot on which to deposit such articles as a camp oven, a bag of staples, a couple of rusty ploughshares and other miscellaneous ironmongery. Geoffrey removed them one by one, and having returned to the outer room for a bunch of keys, unlocked the box. Some stout oiled paper covered the top, and beneath were the books carefully packed away, as though by a hand that loved them. He remembered that it was almost exactly a year since he had placed the last volume in position, and the thought of the life that closed with the closing lid lay heavy on his heart as he gazed. But it was not a book, he now remembered, that was the last thing to be put away; it was this bundle of letters, some of them dating back nearly twenty years. He pulled one out at random and, still on his knees before the box, began to read.

He was busily reading when, over an hour later, Robert put his head in at the door to remind him of the necessity for sleep.

What Geoffrey saw in the letters may be more conveniently put before the reader in narrative form.

More than twenty years before Robert Hernshaw, senior, journalist, having come within measureable distance of grasping one of the plums of his profession—it seemed he had but to stretch out his hand to attain it—was brought up standing by the verdict of his family physician. The latter diagnosed lung trouble of a serious nature, and put before his patient the alternative of a short life in London, or restored health and a prospect of longevity in a kindlier climate. Hernshaw, when he had become convinced that the alternatives were real, left the solution of the problem to his wife, merely expressing his own preference for the present order of things at whatever cost. But Mrs. Hernshaw decided differently. And so it came about that husband and wife sailed for New Zealand, leaving their only child, Geoffrey, then a boy of seven, in the care of his paternal uncle, after whom he had been named. Shortly after reaching their new home their second son, Robert, was born to them.

Having relinquished the prospect of power and comparative affluence for the sake of an increase in years, Robert Hernshaw determined that it should not be through any action of his if the price of the relinquishment went unpaid. He had been told that an active outdoor life was demanded of him, and he was determined that the demand should be met. So when Mrs. Hernshaw proposed that they should make their home in a pleasant suburb of one of the larger towns, and that he should continue in the practice of his profession, Hernshaw at once vetoed the idea. Instead, he bought a piece of land in the Auckland district and settled down to make a living by the sweat of his brow. He had too lately emerged from the barren places of his profession to have accumulated much money, and his knowledge of his new pursuit would have been ludicrous if it had not been tragic in its inadequacy—the result was a foregone conclusion. All might yet have been well, even though his capital was exhausted, had his nature showed any signs of rooting itself in the new soil. But it was not so. The manual labour, the people with whom he was brought in contact, the very air and aspect of his adopted country, were alike repugnant to him. The scorn of his surroundings accompanied him throughout the days; and after some years the old malady, scotched for the time, again came to life, and added its torments to the general misery. Then the morbid brooding developed into a sort of madness. He was seized with a fierce resentment at destiny. He accused the heavens of treachery, as though his action in coming to New Zealand had been the result of a compact with God. In this persuasion he died miserably, supported towards the end by the efforts of the wife and child whom, in his self-absorption, he had neglected.

Robert at this time was fourteen years of age, and had been brought up almost entirely without schooling. His mother had taught him to read and write and solve simple problems in arithmetic, but beyond this the only knowledge he possessed had been derived haphazard from the conversation of those about him. For seven or eight months mother and son were dependent largely on the charity of Major Milward, the pioneer settler of the district, and then the woman, worn out by the long trouble, sickened and died. It is probable that the sufferings of the wife had been little if any less keen than those of the husband, but she made no sign—not even when she lay dying with her arms round the neck of her beloved boy. ‘It will be better for you, my darling,’ was the one tacit acknowledgment she made that life had been a failure. And though the boy did not believe it then or afterwards, it may be that she was right. Life did in fact improve for him immediately. Major Milward, who had entertained a sort of half-tolerant, half-contemptuous pity for the father, showed only pity for the son. He made an opening for him on the station, and when finally, at the age of nineteen, Robert left to join his brother, he carried nothing but good wishes with him.

Far removed from contact with this sordid drama, Geoffrey meanwhile had grown up into manhood. The change which meant so much to his parents affected him not at all. From the comforts of his own home he passed easily to those of his uncle’s well-appointed house, in whose serene atmosphere he found none but the pleasant things of life. Though not exactly a wealthy man, Mr. Hernshaw was an extremely generous one. Having taken over the charge of the boy, he at once placed him on a footing of absolute equality with his own children, and so naturally was this accomplished that neither as a child nor a man could Geoffrey recall one instance of a distinction being made between him and his cousins. He received the same public-school training, the same holidays, the same allowance of pocket-money. His scholastic career, though showing no brilliance, was well above the average, and if the youth revealed no instinctive leaning towards any particular pursuit or profession, he at least showed a power of doing a number of very dissimilar things remarkably well. It was this very versatility that went against him in the end. His uncle, keeping a keen eye on his family, at once seized on any bent in his children which seemed to give a prospect of being profitably employed, but Geoffrey puzzled him. The youth, having visited a picture gallery, would come home full of the idea of painting a picture himself. With a liberal allowance of pocket-money, he was able to gratify any whim immediately on its occurrence, and he would set to work. In a space of time incredibly short, considering everything, he would have something to show the family, and whatever may have been its real merits, it was at least sufficient to convince Mr. Hernshaw that he had at last discovered his nephew’s bent. But in the course of a month or so—or when, to speak precisely, Geoffrey had learned enough to know that his labours were only on the point of commencing—he would begin to lose ardour, and very shortly thereafter the implements of his art would find their way to the lumber-room. This was a course of things which repeated itself again and again.

‘Do you think you would care to study painting?’ his uncle would ask.

‘It would take some time, sir, and cost a good deal of money.’

‘Well, that’s all right; you find the time and I’ll find the money.’

‘It’s very good of you, sir,’ Geoffrey would say, and promise to think the thing over. That was the end of it.