Chapter XXXIX. At the Hot Springs Reminiscences—A Wretched Slave—The Ruling Passion.

Five years have rolled away. Five years. How brief a spare in a life of joy, but to the miserable how interminably long. When hearts are revelling in happy love how swift the moments fly, but oh, how wearily they drag when man or woman stands bereft of all that once made life worth living!

Such, in few words, were the reflections; of one, who, five years subsequent to the deeds of blood narrated in the foregoing chapter tossed restlessly upon a bed of dried fern, within a whare in a native pa situated on the borders of Roto-iti, a cold lake in the thermal spring district of New Zealand. Door and window were both open, the season being summer and the heat suffocating, but the whare was in semi-darkness, for although a full moon irradiated all out of doors, the narrow openings admitted but a niggard allowance of its silver light. However, there was ample for one whose cogitations were his sole occupation, and yet not enough to prevent a healthy person from sleeping. But as the term implies a sound mind in a sound body, the person under notice could scarce lay claim to it, albeit he had never been physically ill in his life, for he had so long pursued one train of thought, or rather had so long made all trains of thought subservient to one remorseless motive, that he had become almost a monomaniac, while the malignant intensity with which he had pursued one object had well-nigh exhausted his vital forces, and left him little better than a skeleton.

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While with weary impatience he lifts himself fro in his lowly pallet to pace the narrow hounds of his whare, let us recall him to the reader's memory. His gliding movement, as, trailing a silken kaitaka, he passes up and down, is enough even in the twilight to reveal his identity, and the glitter of his eyes, as for the hundredth time he murmurs,

‘Arnaud, thou fool, is this life worth living longer?’ places the matter beyond a doubt.

‘Arnaud, then! How came he here,’—you ask—‘at the hot springs?’

Well, that is what we shall discuss, while he considers once again the momentous question which has recently engrossed more and more of his failing energies.

When, on that, dreadful day five years agone, the young warrior Naku-roa intercepted the trio just entering Rau-kata-mea's canoe, he took the wretched Le Blanc a prisoner in the name of Takori, regardless of the protests and even entreaties of the maiden. But moved either by her tears, or Arnaud's expostulations, or both, he consented at last to feign ignorance of the fugitive's whereabouts, and escorting him, attended by Arnaud, to his own pa, some little distance inland, there to keep him concealed until Takori's wrath had subsided. Vainly did, the girl—who intuitively realised the inevitable consequences of her father's act—plead that he might be placed on board one of the ships. She had not even a seconder, for this would have wholly subverted. Arnaud's schemes. He had never intended to put him aboard. With the paddles in his hands he could have guided the canoe at will. But fate had stood his friend. This was just what he had desired—that his master might be placed in safe keeping within Naku-roa's stockade.

But haste was expedient. The natives with Naku-roa were, of his own hupu, and therefore to be trusted to ‘keep dark’ at the direction of their chief. But other eyes might see and report the proceeding to old Takori who would naturally resent such a falling off in duty of his expectant son-in-law. Two poles were therefore quickly cut, and, with the leaves of the ever-useful flax, a litter was hastily improvised, and the prisoner placed upon it, there being fortunately among the party two natives insignificant enough to be made use of as bearers.

Subsequent events followed with such startling rapidity that Arnaud, listening to Naku-roa's description could scarce realise that all was over, and that he alone and his late master were the sole representatives in Maoriland of European civilization. But so it was, and though unavoidably shocked at the calamitous ending of European and native intercourse, he was not sorry to find himself released from the various shackles which had fettered him while the ships remained. It would have been more comfortable for everyone had the races parted friends, and yet that would have entailed considerably more trouble and scheming upon himself personally, and there would always have been the un- page 183 pleasant possibility of the vessels' speedy return. Now that danger was no more, and assured of Naku-roa's protection, he could without let or hindrance apply himself to working out his life's purpose.

Though horrified at the fate of his late associates, his grief was of short duration. While among, he had not been of them, had never had any feelings or thoughts in common. His presence was a certain extent accidental, and he had ever known himself what he had been treated as—an alien, by birth, character, and objects. That was all past now. His brown skin, odd ways, ready adaptability, and singular talents recommended him to the natives as one of kindred, or at least congenial race, and as they had never regarded him as a wee wee, so they never afterwards bore him any malice on account of the Utu which the foreigners hail exacted. As time wore on he rose rapidly in favour, his unusual accomplishments causing him to be regarded somewhat in the light of a sorcerer. His skill in medicaments was known, and his ventriloquial abilities the tuhungas—themselves adepts—soon discovered, and attributing his mesmeric power and the witchery of his eye to magic, their superstitious fears heightened the respect with which they treated him; and as he was careful ever to maintain an unaggressive dignity of deportment which fitted in with their own notions of a rangatira bearing, they readily accepted Naku-roa's assertion—which was indeed the truth—that he was by birth his employer's superior, and fell in with that guileless warrior's proposal that their positions should once again be reversed. When, therefore, the fugitive was again introduced to the light of day, he was somewhat unpleasantly surprised to find himself the bondsman of his late valet. He kicked hard at first, but only to his own detriment, for in all the land he had not a single friend, and the natives had somewhat forcible modes of expostulating with refractory fau-reka-reka One mode of ending his troubles was of course always open to him, but Arnaud had so effectually roused his previously dormant superstition that he simply dared not avail himself of it. Nothing enabled him to accommodate himself to his altered condition like his beloved cognac, which Arnaud, with refined cruelty, sometimes gave him freely, at others withdrawing the supply altogether. The valet, whose preparations had all been made deliberately, had contrived to secrete a considerable supply against need, and gradually, as under the weight of accumulated miseries, the enslaved wretch sank lower and lower in the scale of being, the hope of a glass became his strongest incentive to action, the deprivation of it his cruellest punishment. However, it was some time now since he had been able to console himself with cognac; the supply had long ago given out. But, Arnaud, who knew that the accomplishment of his purposes depended greatly upon intoxicants, prepared from the kava root an intoxicating beverage which did as a substitute.

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To describe all the details of the miserable man's debasement would serve no purpose save the undesirable one of wearying the reader. Enough, that, condemned to the most servile labour by day, and haunted by torturing memories or superstitious terrors at night, goaded by physical tortures at one time, and steeped in drunken stupor at another, his downward progress was uninterrupted; and at the period under consideration he belonged to the most degraded section of a degraded class; had in fact become that most repulsive, yet pitiable of all human beings, a tender of Maori corpses. This was the result of no accident. Arnaud, on that day now so long past, when, back of the pa at Wai-iti, the gay Monsieur D'Estrelles had shuddered at the miserable wretch they saw there, had mentally devoted him to a similar fate, and in all his actions in relation to him since that end had been steadily kept in view. To reduce him to this, the lowest deep of human degradation—of Maori degradation even—and then, revealing his own identity, to leave him to wear out his hopeless days in agonising dread of the judgment to come, this had been the valet's deliberate purpose—a purpose unfalterringly pursued, and now not far off completion.

There had been moments during their sojourn at Naku-roa's pa when the doomed man was within an ace of being somewhat rudely released from his sufferings, for the young warrior never set eyes on him without being reminded of his lost bride, the courageous Rau-kata-mea, who, having returned to Motu Arohia on the day of the cannibal feast, shared the fate of her amiable sister and the majority of the inhabitants of that fair island. But recollecting that under Arnaud's control, prolonged life meant prolonged wretchedness to the object of his hate, Naku-roa staved his hand, and contented himself with revilings.

They had been at the hot lakes for several months, Arnaud, with a suitable escort, having travelled down, lured by native reports of the wonders of the district. His friends in the North had not very willingly parted with him, and only did so on his solemn undertaking to return within the year. But his strength had long been failing. Without developing any particular complaint he suffered much from general debility, and a lassitude which not even his hate could always dissipate. His Utu was on the eye of completion, but his victim's miseries no longer afforded him the lively satisfaction of yore. He had bequeathed his wretched slave to his new friends, meaning shortly to return north, but lately, in his physical weakness and consequent depression, a different course suggested itself. Why should he return? What should he do there? What had he now to live for? He had tasted all the joy he was likely to taste in this world, why not quit it? One scene with his victim had yet to be gone through, but that would be less a pleasure to himself than a last bitter drop in the cup of his enemy. Why not get it over and then have done with all things? These were some of the page 185 pleasant thoughts which of late had occupied his sleepless hours. About another world he never concerned himself. Though he had succeeded in terrorizing his enemy's faculties his own strictly temperate life secured himself from a similar affliction, and wholly occupied with what he conceived to be his business in this world, he simply left the question of another to be decided when—if ever—he got there.

To-night he vas more restless than usual, more weary of a life whose labours produced results so unsatisfying. The Utu. which he had promised himself should be ‘sweeter than honey and the honeycomb,’ tasted like apples of Sodom. The game seemed hardly worth the candle, and there were moments when he felt inclined to leave things as they stood. But he had so long taught himself to look forward to the climax, when, all disguises laid aside, he should reveal himself in his true character and shew the object of his hate to whom he owed his misfortunes, that he could not decidedly bring himself to forego it.

Another thing he was realizing to-night, and that was, that if the finale were not to be a fiasco he had no time to lose, for, as a fact, his victim was slipping through his fingers. Besotted and brutalized, not a vestige of past attractions was traceable in the appearance of the repulsive being who once posed as a man of fashion. Begrimed with dirt, suntanned and tattered, his unkempt hair hanging in elf locks about his stolid visage, he was a forbidding object. But to-day, as like a beast he fed on the refuse thrown him, his tormentor refreshing himself with a passing glance, noticed that his expression had altered somewhat. Brutal, sullen, maudlin, idiotic, he had been all by turns, but now a subtle change in his face suggested approaching insanity. In this way he would escape his pursuer effectually. If, therefore, the concluding scene were not to be abandoned no time must be lost. It would be a miserable thing, if, after waiting so long, the crowning act should be evaded thus, and all at once Arnaud became restlessly impatient to get it over. To-night, why not to-night? The moonlight, clear almost as the noon-tide, but pale and cold, would suit his purpose much better than the sunshine's glare. The dawn was not very far off, either, and it would be better to get the matter over ere the kaka, cried. Yes, he would go to him presently and recall the past, remind him of his crimes, and taunt him with his punishment. And reaching up to the thatch the soi disant valet took from thence a parcel, and opening it, removed some articles of clothing. He had, almost immediately upon his reception into Naku-roa's hapu, laid aside the garments of civilization, and donned those of his new friends, a little compliment they did not fail to appreciate. But those he now exposed to view they had never seen. They were relics of an earlier stage of his existence, and as he turned them over a rush of recollection caused his heart to flutter, his cheek to glow, and his eyes to burn with something of their old fire. They took him page 186 back to the clays so long ago—and yet so few years since—when he was young. They reminded him of all he had lost, of all he had suffered, and as he handled them the old hate revived, the old fierce passion for revenge, the burning desire to gloat over the misery of the man who had robbed him of love and youth and beauty. Yes, he would go to him now, while the cold moonlight lasted, would appear as in the days of old, and paralyze his guilty soul ere the ruddy sun should rise to hearten him. And as he so resolved, with feverish haste he robed his tall slight figure once again in the attire of other days, powdered his lace, and laid aside the snowy periwig, which spite of his change of garb he had hitherto retained. And as he made his hasty preparations ever and anon he muttered: ‘Haste, haste, get it over ere the kaka cries.’