Anna Wetherell and Emery Staines's romance and promise to share the hidden gold

Anna Wetherell and Emery Staines’s relationship joins an improbable reunion to a shared but unsettled intimacy. Their connection grows through recognition and private regard, but it is shadowed by Anna’s debt and dependence, Staines’s uncertainty about how to approach her, and the hidden fortune he means to share. His promise gives their bond material stakes; the events of their final night leave that promise unresolved.

Reunion and Recognition

The pair meet again in Hokitika after Anna arrives at the Reserve Bank with Edgar Clinch, who has been guiding her through town. She recognizes the golden-haired boy from the Fortunate Wind leaning against the porch railing, and he recognizes her in turn. Their mutual surprise gives way to shy regard. Anna tells him she is glad to see him again, and Staines recalls a remark she made as they rounded the harbour heads at dawn: that she would like to see him in a storm. He has remembered it, treating the passing fancy as a distinctive speech; Anna, unused to being praised for her originality, is embarrassed by his attention.

Staines says he has been in Hokitika for more than a month and introduces himself by name. He describes the settlement as a place of contradictions, where practical services are unreliable and ordinary comforts difficult to find. His account makes him seem open and observant, while his delight at meeting a familiar face gives the reunion a personal importance beyond coincidence. The scene establishes a difference in their circumstances without preventing a connection: Anna is hesitant, while Staines readily expresses pleasure in seeing her.

Regard and Unequal Circumstances

Anna comes to desire Staines’s good opinion more than that of her other acquaintances, but she believes his prospects belong to a world above her own. She assumes that his regard for her is the opposite of hers for him, despite his having called on her three times since her recovery. His visits and attention make her assumption less certain, but do not erase the social and economic distance she perceives between them.

One visit brings a bottle of Andalusian brandy, described as the last of its kind in Hokitika. Staines first offers it, then becomes self-conscious and asks to take it back so he can return with a more suitable present. Anna tells him, in effect, that its rarity and singularity make it a welcome gift precisely because it is not conventionally suitable. The exchange reveals different habits of self-assessment: Staines worries that his offering is inadequate, while Anna values the thought and unusual character of the gift. The bottle becomes a small, concrete sign of his attention, not a resolution of the larger inequalities between them.

Those inequalities are especially stark in Anna’s calculation of her obligations. Her debt to Mannering has doubled in a month to one hundred pounds; she sees repayment as potentially taking a decade, with usury, the cost of opium, and the expected decline in her earning value worsening the prospect. Against this narrowing future, Staines appears to her to have bright and numerous prospects. His affection cannot be separated from the conditions that make her doubt she can meet him on equal terms.

The Hidden Fortune and a Promise

When Staines raises Crosbie Wells, Anna’s misery changes to shock. Staines believes Wells is a mutual friend, explaining that he is loyal to him and thinks Wells is loyal to Anna as well. Anna asks whether Wells is in Hokitika. Staines does not disclose his whereabouts, but Anna asks him to carry an important message from her. Her hands move to her belly as she speaks. The exchange ties her private circumstances to the network of trust between Staines and Wells, while leaving the message’s contents and delivery unstated.

After Benjamin Löwenthal tells Staines of Anna’s assault, Staines rides immediately for the Arahura Valley to find Wells. He is profoundly distressed, though he does not articulate the cause to himself; on the way he forgets both wallet and hat and nearly collides with Harald Nilssen outside a hardware shop. At Wells’s door, doubled over, he tells him that the baby is gone. Wells brings him inside and listens. They drink brandy together, and Staines’s grief becomes a promise: he will give Anna half of a secret fortune buried in the ground and dig it up for her. When Wells asks how much half would be, Staines estimates about two thousand pounds before putting his head down on the table.

The promise makes Staines’s regard tangible, but its circumstances remain complicated. The fortune is hidden, and the evidence does not show it being delivered to Anna at this point. Staines presents sharing it as a response to her loss, while Anna’s economic vulnerability means that the offer carries a weight beyond a private declaration. His pledge connects tenderness to wealth without establishing that money can settle the differences that trouble their relationship.

Intimacy and Unresolved Separation

Staines’s own reflections show that his attraction is not uncomplicated. He accepts his desire and pleasure readily, yet feels a bond with Anna that makes him less complete when apart from her and somehow both doubled and halved in her presence. Her nature seems at once opposed to and in accord with his own. Joseph Pritchard’s repeated observation that Anna would have received many propositions had she not been burdened by debt and dependence troubles Staines. He considers paying for a night with her and taking her to the Arahura afterward to show her the buried fortune and offer half. He recognizes that purchasing her company might compromise the meaning of a gift, but is also unsettled by the thought that other men know her in a way he does not. His deliberation exposes the tension between his desire to help Anna and the unequal terms through which he imagines approaching her.

On the final night, Anna is purchased for the night, and she and Staines lie down together. The sequence does not turn their closeness into security. Staines wakes to an empty bed; amid a chain of confusion and missteps, he and Anna separately set out into the night and collapse. The narrative places their intimacy beside the hidden fortune and other simultaneous events, so that their union is both a culmination of their attraction and a fragile interval before separation. Staines’s promise to share the buried wealth remains a defining expression of his attachment, but the relationship’s ending in these events is not a settled future together.