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The Greenstone Door

Chapter XX The Storm-Cloud

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Chapter XX The Storm-Cloud

For the long, calm day has come to an end, and night, dark and gloomy, is descending on the fair landscape.

The change was no matter of a moment. For years I had watched the growing of the cloud and struggled against the idea of its significance. Even when its significance was admitted, I lived in the hope that it might pass without breaking; that the will of honourable men on both sides would prevail and that a way of escape would be found. But its origin lay deeper than the acts, good or ill, of individual men; they might hasten or retard, even alter the method, but they could not affect the result. Clearly do I see now that human passions were but the instruments of the Inevitable, and in so far as we fought against them, not wisely but in anger, we hastened the coming of the end.

The Maori War was precipitated by an act of injustice of the colonists; so much is unquestionable. But when that is said, there remains nothing to be added. That but for the war the condition of the Maori might have been different to-day is a mere dream. For a thousand who fell in the field, ten thousand withered in the airs that blew from the habitations of the white men. The living inhabitants of a country, animal and vegetable, mutually adjust themselves. In New Zealand, separated by vast oceans from the nearest mainland, this adjust-page 279ment had been carried to a point which simulated perfection and stability. Something conceivable as a unity of character pervaded it, from the lowly moss to the giant kauri; from its strange polymorphic plants to its singular birds. But the addition of one insect, one microscopical fungus, rendered it as liable to collapse as a house of cards.

The farmer of to-day is engaged in a herculean struggle with disorder, but there is no fact of early New Zealand better authenticated than that the country originally was peculiarly free from fungoid pests, destructive insects, and deadly diseases. Man was intermittently violent, but for the rest Nature was in a gentle mood. With the European settler came, inter alia, those ancient evils from which his civilisation has never had the wit to release him. Freed from the restraints of the harsher latitudes, often escaping from the clutch of their own special enemies, they ran riot in the virgin field. Birds fell from the boughs, and no man could point to the cause; vigorous manhood succumbed to maladies that would scarce confine a European child to its bed; and war, more insidious and deadly than was ever waged by man, ravaged the foretime Happy Isles.

We did not tell ourselves then that the Maori was doomed; that his best hope was extinction in the blood of the conqueror. Just then he was very much alive, very sure that grave injustice had been done him, very determined that it should be retracted or revenged. The policy of laissez-faire—if indeed it were a policy, and not the entire absence of one—which had followed on the vigorous methods, propitiatory and educative, of Sir George Grey, had resulted in failure. The system of hereditary chieftainship—a tool ready to the hand of the Government—had been suffered to fall into decay long before anything had been devised to take its place, and, from a number of well-ordered communities, the page 280Maori nation had degenerated into a mob whose individual members regarded with equal indifference the law of the Queen and the Ariki. Not that this indifference took the form of lawlessness. Pride held fast even where the moral sense might have proved inadequate, and offences were oftener those of omission than commission.

It was as much the recognition of this disorder among themselves as doubts of the honesty of the Government that led to the initiation of what is known as "the King Movement." Its instigators sought to re-establish that order which the whites—passively, it may be—had caused to be broken, and to make for themselves one voice in place of the numerous conflicting voices of the past. It was inevitable that the desires of the settlers should clash with those of the original owners of the soil, and no policy, short of abnegation on one side or the other, could have prevented such conflict occurring. But the Maori was not unreasonable. He recognised the permanency of the occupation of the country by the white man, and theoretically, if not always practically, he admitted his needs; but he saw also, and with equal clearness, whither the division of his own counsels was driving him, and above all he recognised the necessity for concerted action in the alienation of the ancestral estates.

For my part, not merely my human sympathies—often enough, I admit, deceptive guides—but my judgment also were on the side of the originators of the movement, and I still believe that if with due regard to British sovereignty—a matter which was never in dispute—it had been openly accepted and encouraged by the Government of the day, not only might a costly and protracted war have been averted, but that monstrous edifice of native land laws, through which no human brain can penetrate, which stands to-day a monument to legislative stupidity and a perfect example of How-not-to-do-it, would never have page 281been called into existence; and so might the North Island have been spared that long paralysis which still lingers in a hundred fair and fertile valleys.

With the assistance of the Government it might have been possible for the Maori people to elect a king representative of the whole of the tribes: as it was, he stood for but a section, and a disaffected one. The choice fell on a chief of the Waikatos, a son of Te Whero Whero, who himself enjoys the unenviable distinction of being one of the most ruthless savages of Maori history. But the man who truly represented the Maori nation during that stormy time, who stood for all that is best in his race, and who mentally and morally could compare not unfavourably with his civilised opponents, was Wiremu Tamihana, chief of the Ngatihaua and a son of my old enemy Te Waharoa. On him it was that, when the struggle came, the eyes alike of Maori and European were turned. In strong contrast to his dominant father, he was not a fighting man. Bloodshed and any form of violence were averse from his nature. A love of justice was ingrained in him. Deeply religious, honourable, chivalrous, he commanded the respect and goodwill of every one with whom he came in contact, and no stronger argument in favour of the justice of the cause he espoused is to be found than the fact that he did espouse it—in words while words availed, and in action when the hour for talk had gone by.

With this brief summary of events fateful to the Colony, I may return to my own people.

Te Moanaroa was dead—of a surfeit of cucumbers, obtained, alas! in the garden of his pakeha. My father, finding him seated in the patch, had, with the delicacy his sense of hospitality enjoined, hinted that to be sparing in the eating of cucumbers was a necessity he had himself alighted on after many adventures to the contrary.

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Te Moanaroa smiled in the superior knowledge of his own internal capacity. "I have eaten two of the watermelons," said he, "and this is but a small thing in comparison. Does the Thumb say that six of these prickly ones are the equal of one melon?"

"I fear so, chief," said my father. "Nay, it may be that one of these is more than equal to two melons."

"It is a matter known to the pakeha." admitted Te Moanaroa, sheathing his knife with reluctance. "The four I have eaten shall suffice."

And they did.

We laid him to rest with wailing and much feasting, for to his beneficent government the hapu was deeply indebted. And Piripi his son reigned in his stead.

Quite otherwise did fate deal with the ariki. The years during which he had dwelt almost alone on the mountain, collecting guns and keeping his own counsel, had invigorated rather than relaxed him. No pakeha novelties had played havoc with his constitution, seducing him into habits of sloth and gluttony. As he was when I first saw him, fair-skinned, dark-haired, big-framed, but not corpulent, so was he now. And, as his decline had withdrawn no dignity from his countenance, so now, in his time of triumph, did he betray no elation. For the hour for which he had waited was at hand, and all men knew it. No longer did high chiefs in passing rest at the foot of the pa, regardless of him who sat among the winds. One after another they made the ascent, greeting him in fair words and listening with attention to his rare speech. Had he put himself forward or given encouragement to those who would have done so, he might have imperilled the kingship of the son of Te Whero Whero. But his word on this matter had been consistent with his whole life policy. "First," he had said, "we will get rid of the kings and queens we have."

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There came a day when the noisy village council, muddling through its petty matters, heard far off the sound of the trump of doom. Then was felt the need of the son of the ancient gods. Unanimously they sent word to him, inviting him to join the assembly and direct their councils. Away went the messenger, climbing the steep escarpment, until at last they saw him disappear like a fly through the great gateway. Swift was his return. He had but vanished from sight when, lo! he was back amongst them.

"Speak, then. What says the Great One?"

"Thus does he answer you: 'Where the ariki sits, there is the runanga.'"1

Truly a kingly answer, and for all the swollen pride of the years of peace and plenty, they bowed their heads in loyal subjection and climbed into his presence.

You will not suppose that his mind had suffered any change from recent events. He had but one stern word for them—War. And so, disquietened and yet in a way strengthened, they returned.

"He said so, and he was right," said Rangiora, in a voice which blended filial admiration and regret.

"Not unless you make him so, Rangi," I reminded him. "What part has the Ngatimaniapoto in the troubles of Taranaki?"

"Then if the French invade Kent, that is no affair of Essex?"

I had spent much time on Rangiora's education, and it was in such replies as this that I reaped the harvest of my tilling.

"But the Maori nation has always been divided like a Europe in miniature. Why this display of virtue now?"

"Because, my friend, what happens to Taranaki to-day may happen to Ngatimaniapoto to-morrow."

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"Yes, that is a business-like reason. Let us continue to be business-like. You yourself have nothing to gain by war, and"—extending a hand to the cultivations, through which at the time we were riding—"everything to lose. Is that not so?"

"No," he said, and I drew rein in surprise.

"What gain do you propose to yourself?" I asked. "Or is it the possibility of loss you deny?"

"If war come and I outlive it," he answered, "here is all I have to lose."

"And this represents wealth. Surely regard for life and property should restrain you."

"Not if by risking them I might buy something more to be wished for. Come, my friend, we are brothers in misfortune. Is there nothing to gain which you would freely peril all you possess, even your life?"

My dead heart stirred at his words, revealing to me for a moment the darkness within.

"Ah!" he exclaimed restively, replying to the question in my gaze. "Some evil thing was born in the hour that I first beheld Puhi-Huia, to love her. Twice has the way to her arms led through a pool of blood. Once it was the blood of a man of my own race, now it is of the men of yours."

"You cannot!" I cried, horror-struck at the idea of a compact so malignant. "A union so contracted would be cursed and not blessed."

"The war is not of my making," he responded gloomily. "I shall but reap what others have sown."

"And is this the bait," I cried, a host of recollections thronging together in my mind, "wherewith the ariki would win you. Cunningly has he concealed his purpose all these years. Tell me, what share in the evil is to be yours?"

"None that he himself avoids. In the day of Armageddon I must stand at his right hand."

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"And Puhi-Huia is to be the reward of your consent. Truly, my friend, it is but a lying light you follow if you imagine she will wade to you through the blood of her father's people."

He looked up quickly, his lips framed to speech, but something that read to me like caution gathered in his eyes and checked the impulse. "Negotiations are not yet at an end," he said, evading my gaze. "Who knows but even yet the storm may pass without breaking."

I think it was on that same evening that my father met me with the glad news that Sir George Grey was returning to New Zealand. Recognising the seriousness of the position, the British Government, as once before, had sent us a man.

A wild, unreasoning hope sprang up in my heart as I heard the news. It could but be association that prompted it. "I must go to Auckland, father."

He laid his hand with gentle pressure on my shoulder. "You must go," he agreed. "You must be there to greet him. It is of the last importance—strong man as I believe him—that the views of the natives should not be misrepresented. This paper here talks of measures to suppress rebellion. The natives are not rebellious; they are restless. Their faith in the justice and benignity of the government of the whites is sick to death, and must be medicined back to health. How absurd, nay, how wicked, to talk of the rebellion of those from whom we have taken the earth! It is the clear duty of all living creatures to rebel against extinction; on that depends the advancement, even the continuance of life."

I was sobered by his earnest words. "He will listen to me," I said. "If I had not let our correspondence die out, I might already have done something."

He made no comment on that. Probably he knew as well as I the deadly listlessness with which I suffered page 286the passing years, and found therein nothing worth the doing.

After all I was not in Auckland in time to meet Sir George Grey on his arrival. An accident, due to the antics of a newly broken horse amongst thick timber, incapacitated me for many months, and though I have now sufficient modesty to believe that the fate of New Zealand was in no whit altered by that circumstance, I was of a different expectation then; and the fear of what might be happening to undermine the humane feelings of the Governor kept me in a fever of impatience, and no doubt retarded my recovery. But at last I was pronounced fit to travel, and journeying by the same route as on the previous occasion, came in due course to the City of Sweet Memories.

A sentry among the springing oaks in the Government House grounds allowed me to pass unmolested, and soon I was in the presence of a young aide-de-camp, courteous but punctilious. His Excellency was at home. My card should be presented to him as soon as he was at leisure.

"I have no card. Would you say that Little Finger brings him a welcome from the Ngatimaniapoto?"

The aide regarded me doubtfully. He regretted that he could not accept the responsibility of such a message.

"Then say that Cedric Tregarthen of Matakiki is here." I am afraid I spoke a trifle impatiently, for though no one had a greater regard for rank than I, it was the thing itself I reverenced, and not its fripperies and exclusiveness.

As the sound of my voice died away there was a hasty movement in the room beyond. Was it the swish of a skirt I heard, followed by the soft click of a closing door? One has sensations of that kind through the organ of hearing, which cannot be dissected, and are impossible to verify. The next moment the curtain was swung aside and the Governor himself came hastily into the room. page 287His step slackened before he reached me, and doubt partly displaced the recognition in his eyes. "It is Cedric Tregarthen?" he said, scanning me attentively.

"Yes, sir."

His face cleared and he took my hand in a cordial grip. "You are bigger than I imagined, Cedric," he said, laughing, "but your voice is unmistakable"; and still holding my hand, he led me into his study.

The first thing on which my eyes fell was a sandal-wood box of chessmen with which Helenora and I had often amused ourselves, and so poignant were the memories it aroused that I stood rooted to the ground, forgetful of aught else. The box had been placed among a heap of papers; three or four pieces were withdrawn and stood upright among the litter. I did not remark the strange incongruity of their presence on that busy table—to me they were the sole things there, and they were less there than in the golden past, set out in the soft lamplight and warm from the touch of Helenora's fingers.

"… Sit down."

I became conscious of the repetition and obeyed.

"… expressed interest in objects of art of that nature … fine workmanship … from Benares." He closed the box and looked at me steadily.

I nodded, vaguely understanding that he was explaining the presence of the chessmen among his papers.

"Your face is thinner than perhaps it should be," he said in a different tone; "sterner, too, than I imagined it could be."

"Life is sterner to the man than the boy, Your Excellency," I suggested.

"Here too?" he asked with a sigh, and I was reminded of the rumours I had heard of infelicity in his own private life. I took the opportunity of his momentary abstraction to examine his face more closely. Save a strengthening of page 288the characteristic lines, bringing out the forceful character of the jaw and a scattering of grey at the temples, there was no change that I could note. He might have been but a year gone instead of seven.

"I bring you a welcome from the chiefs of the Ngatimaniapoto," I said presently. "Their word to you is—'Well that our white father has returned.'"

"Fair words, Cedric," he replied; "but I hear that there are many of the Maniapoto away, from their homes."

"But a few, Your Excellency; and of men of the highest rank, none. Yet it is well you are come. Not too soon for our needs."

"Yes," he said, with a sort of gay bitterness. "I am the stormy petrel of the Empire. Where the clouds gather, there must you seek for Grey. Why it is I know not, save that I am ticketed a soldier, and the son of a soldier."

"Some day," I said, "England will bethink itself and reward you; and if not, the new nations will remember."

A smile lightened the shadow on his face. "Now I am assured," he said, "that it is really Cedric Tregarthen before me. Well, let us talk. A pretty mess you have made of things amongst you." He rose and stood against the mantelpiece in an attitude I remembered of old, one eye partly closed, as though by the trick he assisted attention. "What is the grievance of the descendants of Maniapoto?"

And I put the case of the Maori before him as I beheld it with their eyes—the decay of the old customs, barbarous, it may be, but serving a useful purpose; the collapse of discipline amongst them; the futility of education, of religion even, to supply the place of what had been taken away; the absence of a consistent and, above all, a scientific native policy.

"No man could be more willing, more eager to save the native race than I," he broke in at last; "but ultimately page 289their salvation depends on themselves. The Maori can only be helped to bring forth what is already in him. But these are generalities. Let us get down to the concrete."

I was not without ideas of my own—it matters not now what they were—and I put them forth with what clearness and eloquence I could. He heard me almost in silence to the end, only now and then interrupting me with a brief question that served to eliminate what was visionary, from my schemes.

"Times are changed, Cedric," he said when I had concluded. "The autocrat is an autocrat no longer. He has his advisers, and disobeys them at his peril. Still there is wisdom in your ideas, and they shall simmer in my mind. Meantime, with regard to Waitara, I am clearly of the opinion that the negotiations were faulty. I have gone exhaustively into the matter, and I see no escape from the conclusion that the sale was bad and therefore nugatory."

"And you will say so, sir?" I exclaimed, well pleased.

"I have already said so—to my advisers. I have suggested what I consider is in honour incumbent on us, and there the matter rests. But, he added with a frown, "the seizure of Tataraimaka is another matter. If our honour demands the redress of wrongs we ourselves commit, it is equally involved in the punishment of offences against us."

"It was but a quid pro quo," I urged. "They had remonstrated in vain. What do they know of the law's technicalities and delays? Restore Waitara, and they will quit."

"Not otherwise?"

"I do not say so. The word of the Governor that restoration is to be made will surely suffice. Believe me, sir, their eyes are bent on you with expectancy."

A look of anxiety shadowed his face. "God knows I page 290would not disappoint them," he said earnestly, "but you must concede the difficulty of my position. My own pride I might subdue, but the honour of England is in my keeping, and no official may lightly imperil that. Then again, my hands are tied." He paused a moment and added: "There is still another thing—the general attitude of the natives towards the settlers is far from conciliatory. Hourly and from all sides I receive reports, if not of actual violence, at all events of insolence amounting nearly to aggression. You see but your own little territory, my boy; my view extends over the whole North Island."

"Those are not the acts of responsible persons, sir," I pleaded. The old authorities have been suffered to die out, and now every man behaves as it pleases him, with only the checks his own disposition provides. Without the restraints of government where would our own race be?"

"I can recognise no distinction between the native and the settler; the Queen's rule subjects both."

"Then bring it to their doors. Restore the authorities which have been allowed to decay. Recognise their king and uphold him."

"That," he said firmly, "I can never do. Even if the tribes were unanimous in the matter, the movement could not in its present shape receive the support of the British Government; but they are very far from being unanimous. Your king is but king of a section. He will never be more. To acknowledge him would be to bring down upon ourselves the contempt of the powerful tribes who know not the son of Te Whero Whero."

"I am not thinking so much, Your Excellency, of the king they have chosen," I said, "as of the king they might choose with the help of the Government."

He shook his head. "Something I am already attempting, to restore authority among them, not, however, on page 291the lines of hereditary chieftainship. But I set before myself the making of a united New Zealand; no factions must spring up to threaten its unity. The brown men must submit to the inevitable; the white man must practise restraint, tolerance, generosity. He may move slowly, as a man adjusts his step to that of a child, but he must not pause, much less turn back." The dreamy abstraction of the poet softened and dimmed his blue eyes, and for a moment he was silent.

Suddenly his eye turned to the clock on the mantelpiece, and he bestirred himself.

"Your atmosphere is contagious, Cedric," he said, smiling. "Dreams are not for this practical room, where it is demanded that each problem shall be solved independently as it occurs. How long are you staying?"

I told him, and he appointed an hour when he would be at leisure to hold uninterrupted conversation with me. "Some great stars have appeared in the literary firmament since we read together in the early fifties," he said, as he accompanied me to a door opening on the shrubbery at the side of the house. "We will make the quiet midnight glow with them." Then, in sudden thoughtful transition—"You are aware that Lady Wylde is dead?"

"Yes."

"Colonel Wylde is in Wellington. He is to take command of the 58th Regiment. He has made remarkable advancement for a man of his years. The Crimea was his opportunity."

I hung expectant on his words. For the life of me I could not bring to my lips the question that ached to be spoken.

"Good-bye," he said, and we parted.

I went out through the shrubbery, looking about me with interested eyes. I could not deny the superior possibilities for beauty of the site of the restored Govern-page 292ment House over St. Kevens, but the latter held my heart. Away from the bushes I turned to look at the great house. My eye fell on a window…. It happened in an instant of time. Even as I sought to concentrate my gaze, she was gone and the room was empty. The curtains were drawn back; the casement open; sunlight poured in, revealing every detail, but nothing lived among its contents. Yet my blood was running like a mill-race. In haste I retraced my steps to the door I had left, raised my hand to the bell, and stood so, motion arrested, suffering the return of cold reason. If she were there, he would have told me. How absurd to suppose that he would remember my acquaintance with the brother and forget how close had been my companionship with the sister! My hand fell, and once again I retraced my steps. The room as I repassed it was still empty. There was no sign anywhere of the face I had seen or imagined. Hoping, doubting, questioning even my sanity, I made my way to the gates.

1 Runanga = the Parliament.