Song of the Spirits (50 page)

“I don’t need an explanation, thank you. I just got one. Is that why Kura left, William? Did she discover what was going on right under her nose?”

“Kura…” William did not know how to formulate his explanation. He could hardly tell his mother-in-law that Kura had been refusing him. “She, she didn’t want…”

Gwyneira looked at him coldly. “Spare yourself your excuses. I know, and I could slap myself for not realizing it sooner. It was the same with Elaine, after all, wasn’t it, William? You cheated on her with Kura, and now you’re cheating on Kura with this… Start packing your things, Miss Witherspoon! This instant. I want you out of this house tomorrow as well.”

“As well?” William asked, confused.

“Yes, ‘as well.’ Because I don’t want to see you around here anymore. And don’t you even dare mention your daughter. No judge will award her to an adulterer.” Gwyneira had begun to rock the child in her arms, which had calmed Gloria immediately. The little girl now looked at her father and Heather with curiosity. “It’s bad enough that she has to see this.”

“But I love Kura,” whispered William.

Gwyneira rolled her eyes. “Well, you certainly have a strange way of showing your love. Frankly, I couldn’t care less whom you love at the moment. If you think it would help, you can track Kura down and beg her forgiveness. But I won’t have you hanging around here, drinking my whiskey and seducing the staff. Go, get out of this room! And be gone from Kiward Station by daybreak!”

“You can’t really—”

“Oh, can’t I?”

Gwyneira stood there with a rock-hard countenance until William and Heather had made themselves halfway decent. She even took the trouble of turning away while the two climbed out of bed and gathered their things. Then she turned out the light and locked Kura’s room behind them.

“You’ll be gone by daybreak tomorrow,” she declared again. “Miss Witherspoon, I’ll leave your remaining pay on the table in the salon. I’m coming down to breakfast at nine. I don’t want to see either of you then.”

With that, she walked off, leaving the humiliated couple to themselves. Gwyneira still needed to go to her office to count out Heather’s money. Then she needed a whiskey.

James was just leaving the stables, tired and frozen through, as Gwyneira poured herself a glass. Gloria was asleep in the corner of a sofa with her thumb in her mouth.

James cast an astounded look at his wife.

“Did you knock the kid out with booze?” he asked with a grin.

Gwyneira poured him a glass as well, and turned her pale face to his. “More like I’m trying to knock myself out. Here, take this. You’ll need it too.”

Sleepless and chalky pale, Heather waited in front of the stables for William. When he arrived around six o’ clock in the morning with his saddlebags packed, he cast an astonished look at the young woman and her luggage.

“What are you doing here?” he asked coldly. “Wouldn’t it be better to wait on the road to Haldon? Someone is sure to pass by today. If you’re lucky, they might even take you as far as Christchurch.”

Heather looked at him in disbelief. “We… we aren’t traveling together?”

William frowned. “Together? Don’t be ridiculous. How is my horse supposed to carry all this stuff?”

Tears shone in Heather’s eyes. “You could rent a chaise. We…”

William felt a surge of rage bubbling up inside him.

“Heather, there is no ‘we!’ I’ve tried and tried to make that clear to you, but you don’t seem to want to understand that. I’m married, and I love my wife.”

“She left you!” Heather yelled.

“And I should have gone after her straightaway. Granted, we had our differences, but all that happened between you and me, that was a mistake. We shouldn’t make it any worse. Can I help you carry your luggage to the road?” William set his saddlebags down and reached for her suitcase.

Heather flared up at him. “I can manage on my own, you…” She wanted to insult him, to scream and curse him, but people had instilled in her from a young age that a lady did no such thing, and so she could not even find the words to voice her rage.

Heather convinced herself that at least she maintained her dignity that way. She bit her lip but did not cry as she dragged her bags down the road.

“Good luck, William,” she managed. “I hope you find Kura and are happy.”

William did not reply. By the time he reached the point in the road where it forked to Haldon or Christchurch half an hour later, Heather was gone.

O
ver the next few months, William learned a great deal about sheep, cattle, and panning for gold, but more than anything else, he learned about himself.

His search for work that both suited him and brought in enough money to eke out a living led him throughout the entire South Island—and nearly beyond it, for at first he was pursuing his goal of finding Kura again. But the opera ensemble was in Australia, and William lacked the funds for the crossing—in addition to the fact that he did not possess a precise tour schedule and would therefore never have known how to locate Kura in that giant country. He comforted himself with the knowledge that the singers would return eventually. George Greenwood had received special prices for the boat trip from Christchurch to England, so Christchurch would be the certain end point of the ensemble’s tour. Since the singers would be visiting several other towns on the South Island, William only had to fill a few weeks.

Those weeks, however, proved to be more difficult to fill than he’d expected, since his pride forbade him from asking for work in the area around Kiward Station. The sheep barons had known him as their equal, after all. So he directed his horse’s steps in the direction of Otago, toward the sheep farms around the McKenzie Highlands. There was always work to be had there, but William did not stay in any one place for long. It was as he had suspected on Kiward Station: he didn’t have a talent for handling the animals himself, and the farms’ owners either oversaw the work themselves or entrusted it to their long-standing farmhands. Besides, William could not stand the workers’ lodgings. He hated sleeping out in the open, and he found
the men’s bawdy jokes, often at his expense, more insulting than entertaining.

Thus he moved from farm to farm, even doing a stint at Lionel Station, where he learned the details of Elaine’s tragedy. William had come to regret the matter deeply. He knew that James McKenzie for one, and surely the rest of Elaine’s family as well, blamed him for her rash marriage. Elaine had never completely gotten over him. In addition, he had long since come to the conclusion that Elaine would have been the smarter match for him. Assisting in the O’Kay Warehouse had suited him much better that his work on Kiward Station, and though Elaine had not been as exciting, she had been much more reliable and far gentler than Kura.

Nevertheless, his heartbeat quickened whenever he so much as thought about anything that was somehow connected to Kura. He had truly loved her—he loved her still, damn it! And he would have taken on anything, even the challenges of the farm, if only she had stayed with him. Why could she not be happy with what she had?

He was surprised that Elaine had not found happiness, either. Though William found John Sideblossom repellent, Lionel Station was a beautiful property. And Elaine had always dreamed of living on a sheep farm.

William did not stay on Lionel Station for long. The atmosphere was gloomy, and John paid poorly—it was no wonder, he had created his own stream of endlessly renewable cheap labor. Ever observant, William had immediately noted the similarities between the Maori workers and their employer. The man had more trouble producing legitimate children. Zoé Sideblossom’s first child had died during delivery, and she had just suffered a miscarriage.

William had no luck at the gold mines of Arrowtown. And seal hunting on the West Coast repulsed him more than it attracted him. Hunting seals had become a downright exhausting business anyway. The animals had become more skittish and ceased to wait on the beach by the hundreds for their hunters, as they used to do. William tried his hand helping out a coffin maker, but the work was too morbid for him. As it was, the coffin maker was the first boss to regret his
departure. Once William had started advising the customers, they had begun paying considerably more money for beautiful and elaborate coffins.

Finally, he was drawn to Westport, once again hoping to find Kura. Though he had heard that the West Coast would be one of the tour’s last stops, he saw nothing about any touring opera ensembles when he arrived. People were looking for workers for the coal mines. Though it was apparently well-paid work, William dreaded the prospect of backbreaking labor in the mines. In his view, you had to be born a coal miner. So, instead, he headed off with his gold-miner gear to the Buller River, where he finally had a bit of luck. He pulled about thirty dollars’ worth of gold dust from a stream in a single day. Since William had no claim himself, the owner of the claim pocketed half. Still, fifteen dollars was enough for a few nights in a hotel, some good whiskey, and access to a bathhouse. William moved into what was reputedly a properly well-run inn and ordered himself a drink first thing. While the owner filled his glass, he let his gaze wander over the room—and what he saw astounded him.

The barroom was not full of men drinking whiskey and playing cards or darts, as was customary. That day, the center of attention was a man tinkering with a strange machine that he’d placed on a table. He was giving a presentation while running the rumbling little device by means of a crank on its side. His audience was even more astounding, for it consisted entirely of excitedly twittering women and girls. Respectable women, by the looks of them, wearing simple dresses. The older women kept an eye not only on the machine but also on their daughters, who had likely entered a pub for just the first time in their lives. The girls, however, couldn’t have been less interested in the pub decor or the few lonely drunkards in the corners. They only had eyes for the elegant young man, who was explaining the finer points of the machine.

“You see, where a practiced seamstress makes fifty stitches, this little work of wonder manages three hundred. In any woman’s hands. Would you like to give it a try?”

The man let his gaze wander over the circle of women and girls who stood around him like a class of eager schoolgirls. He finally selected a darling little blonde girl. She blushed immediately.

“Can I really?” she said hesitantly.

The young man ran a hand through his curly dark hair with a smile.

“But of course, my lady. You can do the machine no harm. On the contrary! In such beautiful hands, it will run without a hitch.”

Flattered, the girl sat down in front of the machine and began to crank the lever. She did not appear to be too successful however, and let out a shocked cry when something went wrong.

“Oh that’s nothing, my lady. The thread occasionally breaks when you’re just getting started. But we’ll fix that in no time. Look here, we simply thread it through, and here, and here, and then through the needle again. It’s that simple. Now try again. But this time, don’t hold tight to the material. Just guide it. With a gentle touch. That should come easily to you.”

While the girl gave it another try, William approached, his glass in his hand. He was taller than most of the girls and could easily see over them. The little machine looked a bit like a large insect bending its head hungrily over its prey and biting its teeth into it repeatedly. The “prey” proved to be two pieces of fabric and the teeth, a needle that was pushing through the material at lightning speed, binding the pieces with a clean stitch. Things did not appear to be going well for this seamstress, however.

“Let me try,” said an older woman, and the girl made room for her. As the woman turned the crank at a more relaxed tempo, the needle slowed its dance and made a series of straight, even stitches. The man could hardly contain his enthusiasm.

“There you have it. You’re a natural talent, my dear woman. A few days’ practice, and you could be sewing your first dress. Well done!”

The woman nodded. “Truly, it’s a wonder. But a hundred dollars is a lot of money.”