Song of the Spirits (2 page)

An unimaginable length of time, really. It was high time he set things right. The boys in the gold mines had gone on and on about Daphne’s girls, of course; they were supposed to be rather pretty and the rooms clean. But the thought of courting this sweet little redhead pleased William considerably more than the prospect of seeking instant gratification in a prostitute’s arms.

Even the room Elaine now opened for him delighted him. It was tidy and furnished simply but lovingly with furniture made of light-colored wood. There were pictures on the wall, and a pitcher with water for washing up stood ready.

“You can use the bathhouse as well,” Elaine explained, reddening a bit. “But you have to sign up ahead of time. Ask my grandmother. Or Mary or Laurie.”

With those words, she was about to turn away, but William held her back gently.

“And you? I can’t ask you?” he inquired softly, looking at her attentively.

Elaine smiled, flattered. “No, I’m not usually here. I’m only standing in for Grandmum today. But I… well, normally I help out at the O’Kay Warehouse. It’s my father’s business.”

William nodded. So she was not just pretty then but also from a good family. He liked the girl more and more. And he needed several items for gold mining anyway.

“I’ll stop by sometime soon,” William said.

Elaine positively floated down the stairs. She felt as though her heart had turned into a hot air balloon that was lifting her in a lively updraft above earthly concerns. Her feet hardly touched the ground, and her hair seemed to blow in the wind, though naturally no breeze stirred inside the house. Elaine was beaming; she had the sensation that she was
standing at the beginning of an adventure, as beautiful and invincible as the heroines in the novels she secretly read in Ethan’s general store.

With that same expression still on her face, she did a little dance in the garden of the large town house that contained Helen O’Keefe’s hotel. Elaine knew it well; she had been born in this house. Her parents had built it for their growing family when their business first began turning a profit. However, it had eventually become too loud and busy for them in the middle of Queenstown. Elaine’s mother, Fleurette, hailed from one of the great sheep farms in the Canterbury Plains, and she in particular missed the open country. Elaine’s parents had therefore resettled on a bucolic piece of land on the river, which was missing only one thing: gold deposits. Elaine’s father, Ruben O’Keefe, had originally marked it off as a claim, but despite his many talents, he had been a hopeless case when it came to discovering gold. Fortunately, Fleurette had quickly realized that, and had invested her dowry in merchandise delivery—primarily shovels and gold pans, which the miners practically snatched out of their hands—rather than in the futile “gold mine” enterprise. The O’Kay Warehouse had grown out of those early sales.

Fleurette had called the new house on the river “Gold Nugget Manor” as a joke, but the name had eventually taken root. Elaine and her brothers had grown up happily there among the horses and pigs, even a few sheep, just like where Fleurette had been raised. Ruben complained when he had to shear the sheep every year, and his sons, Stephen and George, likewise cared little for farmwork—in stark contrast to Elaine. The little country house she’d grown up in was nothing like Kiward Station, the large sheep farm her grandmother Gwyneira managed in the Canterbury Plains. She would have loved to live and work there and was a little envious of her cousin, who was set to inherit the farm one day.

Elaine, however, was not one to brood for any length of time. She found it almost as interesting to help out in the store and manage things in the hotel for her grandmother. She had little desire to go to college like her older brother, Stephen. He was studying law in Dunedin, thus fulfilling his father’s dream, as he too had once
wanted to be a lawyer. Ruben O’Keefe had been a justice of the peace in Queenstown for almost twenty years, and there was nothing he liked better than chatting about legal matters with Stephen. Though Elaine’s younger brother, George, was still in school, it looked like he would be the businessman of the family someday. He was already zealous about helping out in the shop and had thousands of ideas for improvements.

Helen O’Keefe—still unaware of her granddaughter’s high spirits and their origins in the form of newcomer William Martyn—was gracefully pouring tea into the cup of her guest, Daphne O’Rourke.

This tea party in public view gave both ladies a certain mischievous delight. They knew that half of Queenstown whispered about the friendship between the two “hotel owners.” Helen, however, felt no compunction about it. Some forty years earlier, a thirteen-year-old Daphne had been sent to New Zealand under her tutelage. An orphanage in London had wanted to get rid of a few of its charges, and people were looking for maids in New Zealand. Helen had been about to leave England for an uncertain future with a fiancé she had never met, and the Church of England had paid for her crossing as the girls’ chaperone.

Helen, who had served as a governess in London until then, made use of the three-month journey to polish the girls’ social skills, skills that Daphne still employed to this day. Her position as a housemaid, however, had been a fiasco—as had Helen’s marriage. Though both women had found themselves in insufferable conditions, they had each made the best of it.

They looked up when they heard Elaine’s footsteps on the rear terrace. Helen raised her narrow, deeply wrinkled face, whose pointed nose betrayed her kinship with Elaine. Her hair, once dark brown with a chestnut-colored shine, was now streaked with gray but remained long and healthy. Helen wore it in a bun at the nape of her neck most of the time. Her gray eyes glowed with life experience and
curiosity—especially just then, as she’d noticed the radiant expression on Elaine’s face.

“Well now, child! You look like you just got a Christmas present. Do you have some news?”

Daphne, whose feline features looked a little hard even when she smiled, appraised Elaine’s expression a little less innocently. She had read it in the faces of dozens of easy women who thought they had found Prince Charming among their customers. And every time, Daphne spent long hours comforting the girl when her dreamy prince ultimately proved himself a frog, or worse, some disgusting toad. Daphne’s face therefore reflected a certain wariness as Elaine approached them cheerfully.

“We have a new guest,” she exclaimed enthusiastically. “A gold miner from Ireland.”

Helen frowned. Daphne laughed, and her glowing green eyes flashed derisively.

“Are you sure he wasn’t lost, Lainie? Irish gold miners usually end up with my girls.”

Elaine shook her head emphatically. “He is not one of those… Forgive me, Miss O’Rourke, I mean…” she spluttered. “He’s a gentleman… I think.”

The wrinkles in Helen’s brow deepened. She had some experience with “gentlemen.”

Daphne laughed. “Dearie, there’s no such thing as an Irish gentleman. Anyone who is considered a noble over there is originally from England, since the island has been an English possession for ages—a fact that still has the Irish howling like wolves after a few pints. Most of the Irish clan leaders were deposed and run out by English nobility. And they haven’t done anything since but get rich off the backs of the Irish. Now they’re letting their tenants starve by the thousands. Some gentlemen! But your miner could hardly be among them. They cling to their dirt.”

“How do you know so much about Ireland?” Elaine asked, intrigued. The brothel’s proprietress fascinated her, but she rarely had the opportunity to speak at length with her.

Daphne smiled. “Sweetheart, I am Irish. On paper at least. And when the immigrants get mopey around me, that is a great comfort to them. I’ve even been practicing my accent.” Daphne lapsed into an Irish drawl, and even Helen laughed. In reality, Daphne had been born somewhere near the docks in London, but she went by the name of an Irish immigrant. A certain Birdie O’Rourke had not survived the passage to New Zealand, and her passport had fallen into Daphne’s hands by way of an English sailor.

“Come, Paddy, you can call me Birdie.”

Elaine giggled. “That’s not how he talks though… William, our new guest.”

“William?” Helen asked indignantly. “The young man has you calling him by his first name?”

Elaine shook her head quickly to deter her grandmother from forming any resentment toward the new resident.

“Of course not. I simply read it on his forms. His name is Martyn. William Martyn.”

“Not exactly an Irish name,” Daphne remarked. “No Irish name, no Irish accent… assuming everything is aboveboard. If I were you, Mrs. O’Keefe, I would sound the boy out first thing!”

Elaine fixed her with a rancorous look. “He’s an upstanding man, I know it! He even wants to buy his mining equipment from our shop.”

The thought comforted her. When William came to the store, she would see him again, regardless what her grandmother thought about him.

“That, of course, makes him a man of honor,” Daphne teased. “But come, Mrs. O’Keefe, let’s talk about something else. I’ve heard you’ll soon be receiving a visitor from Kiward Station. Is it Mrs. McKenzie?”

Elaine listened to the conversation a little longer, but then went on her way. After all, her other grandmother and her cousin’s visit had already been discussed extensively in recent days. Not that Gwyneira’s fly-by-night visits were so sensational. She visited her children and grandchildren often and was, moreover, close friends with Helen O’Keefe. Whenever she stayed at Helen’s hotel, the women often
talked all night long. The only thing that was unusual about this visit was that Gwyneira was to be accompanied by Elaine’s cousin Kura. That had never happened before, and it did seem… well, scandalous. Fleurette and Helen usually lowered their voices when discussing this subject, and they had not allowed the children to read Gwyneira’s letter. Kura did not seem to think much of traveling, at least not to visit her relatives in Queenstown.

Though Elaine was only a year older than Kura, Elaine hardly knew her. The girls had never had much to say to each other during Elaine’s rare visits to Kiward Station. They were simply too different. When Elaine was there, she thought of nothing except riding and sheepherding. She was fascinated by the endless expanse of grassland and the hundreds upon hundreds of wool providers grazing on it. In addition to that, her mother, Fleurette, blossomed on the farm. She loved racing with Elaine toward the snowcapped mountains, which never seemed to get any closer even when they were going at a breakneck gallop.

Kura, on the other hand, preferred to remain in the house or garden and only had eyes for her new piano, which had been sent from England to Christchurch with a goods shipment for the O’Keefes. Elaine thought her a complete idiot because of that, but then again, she had only been twelve years old the last time she visited. And envy had no doubt also played a role. Kura was the heiress of Kiward Station. All the horses, sheep, and dogs would someday belong to her—and she didn’t appreciate any of it!

Elaine was now sixteen and Kura fifteen. The girls were sure to have more in common than before, and this time Elaine would be able to show her cousin her own world. Surely she would like Queenstown, the lively town on Lake Wakatipu, which was so much closer to the mountains than the Canterbury Plains and much more exciting, with its countless gold seekers from every corner of the globe and a pioneer spirit not confined to mere survival. Queenstown had a flourishing amateur theater group directed by the pastor, there were square-dancing associations, and a few Irishmen had formed a band and played Irish folk music at the pub and the community center.

Elaine reflected that she should absolutely tell William about that as well—maybe he would even want to go dancing with her! Now that she had left the skeptical ladies in the garden, the wistful glow returned to Elaine’s face. Full of hope, she positioned herself once more behind the reception desk. William might come by again, after all.