The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 40

Chapter XXXIV. — The Major's Dinner

Chapter XXXIV.

The Major's Dinner.

Mrs. Gordon was an invalid, and the cares of the house fell upon her daughters, who each took her week of management, and were fairly good housekeepers. The palm of housekeeping fell by general consent to the younger of the three girls. The eldest shirked the business dreadfully. Sometimes the Major would confess his inability to understand how it was that his daughter Lizzy (the youngest) could manage the servants as she did, but there the fact remained, she did manage them; and whenever her week came round (Miss Elizabeth's week usually consisted of ten days, and sometimes of a fortnight, upon special occasions), the Major could not grumble about his dinners. If anything disagreeable was to be said in the kitchen, Miss Lizzy was by universal consent declared the deputy, and never a murmur was heard. This strange power of charming servants is worth a vast deal in these degenerate days, when the maid is as good as the mistress; for with some poor people servants are the bane of their existence; and with some servants all the power of the charmer, "charm he or she never so wisely," is completely thrown away. Yet if Major Gordon is to be taken as an authority, his daughter Elizabeth had a peculiar charm of her own, and the most unruly Bridget submitted to her sway.

The dinner passed pleasantly enough, as all such dinners do, and the Major filled up the most part of the conversation with laughable reminiscenses of the olden time, occasionally varied by an all round attack on the parsons. A new clergyman had lately arrived in Edgecombe, and the gentleman appeared to be the object of the Major's aversion.

"Don't go to church, Easthorpe," said he, "until we get a better specimen of a minister than we have at present."

"I am afraid there is little chance of my being able to," replied Charley, "as we must get away to-morrow morning."

"Well, you will miss nothing, I can assure you. Why on earth the people at Home should send us out such woe-begone specimens of humanity I cannot conceive."

"Mr Hardy is not so bad, papa," said his eldest daughter. "He will get used to us by-and-by."

"Bad," replied the Major, with withering contempt. "Bad! Well, he may not be bad so far as parsons go, but what earthly use would he be for a brush with the natives. Besides, I can't bear a ranter."

"You don't expect clergymen to fight the Maoris surely, papa," said his daughter Lizzy. While Mrs. Gordon explained to Philip that "the clergy" was the Major's sore point.

The Major was nonplussed for a moment, and paid attention to his knife and fork.

"No, Lizzy," said he at last, "I don't expect a clergyman to fight, but I do expect to find something gentlemanly about him. Why they should send us out such fellows I can't understand. Now, look at the old Archdeacon. There wat a parson for you, and a man to boot, although he did happen to adjourn service one fine Sunday morning to go and unload a cargo of cattle he had got down from Sydney."

"Why, couldn't the cattle wait," laughingly asked Philip.

"No, sir, they could not, at least the Archdeacon thought so, for directly the clerk whispered to him that the ship had come in than he very briefly dismissed the service, and off he went. What is more the congregation went with him. There wasn't many cattle in New Zealand in those days, but there were plenty of parsons. It was a great day for Edgecombe when the cattle were landed safe and sound on the beach, and some of the natives who had never seen a beast before were rather surprised at seeing the cattle come out of the ship. The Archdeacon worked like a man that day, and took his coat off besides. I guarantee your Mr. Hardy hardly knows what a cattle beast is. And as for fighting, of course he will have to fight some day."

"You surely don't expect ever to have another war," said Charlie, enquiringly.

"Don't be too sure of that, Easthorpe," replied the major, looking straight at him, and then becoming silent.

"You mus'nt mind my husband, Mr. Easthorpe," said Mrs. Gordon; "he always says that we are to have another war, but I don't believe we ever shall."

"You are not aware, my dear," said her husband, quietly looking down the table, at his wife, "that Huru te Kure's mob have broken out of prison, and there is no knowing what they will be up to."

"No, Harry!" said Mrs. Gordon, somewhat anxiously. "When did that occur?"

"Only yesterday," replied her husband. "I received the news this afternoon."

"And where are they now?" asked Philip, who with Charlie had often heard of Huru te Kure in the south.

"Making a bee line for Edgecombe, as fast as their legs will let them," replied the major. "But don't be alarmed my dear," continued he to his wife, "they are not here yet. Only it will be just as well for Lizzy to lay in a stock of provisions in case we do have a seige."

Mrs. Gordon and her daughter heard the news without showing any particular alarm, although Charlie felt a slight touch of nervousness when he thought of the exposed position of Terua. Major Gordon's women-folk, as we have before related, had been too much accustomed to items of intelligence, such as this, to allow it to disturb the decorum of a dinner table. If the truth were known, slight glimpses of volunteers under arms, and garrison balls in Edgecombe, crossed the minds of the girls, and very likely they thought more about furbishing up their ball dresses, and the state of their wardrobe, than laying in a stock of provisions. Five women out of six usually think about these things first of all when anything unexpected happens. Did not Creüsa hang behind to save some of her wardrobe when Troy was in flames, and is not this example one of the earliest records of history? The French say that the unexpected always happens. When it does, it may be taken as a safe rule that the female portion of British humanity usually think of the state of their wardrobes.

"You will have to volunteer, and take a rifle up with you to protect your cattle and sheep," said Miss Lizzy Gordon to Charley.

"I don't know whether I can," answered Charley. "What say you, Manning. Shall we join, and build a stockade at Terua?"

"I wonder whether we could hold it?" answered Philip.

"That depends," replied the major, who remembered cases quite as unlikely as this turning out well. "But don't let my daughter quiz you, Easthorpe?"

"Oh, papa, I am not quizzing," indignantly replied Miss Lizzy, blushing deeply at, the charge. "Will not Mr. Easthorpe really have to defend himself?"

"Arn't you?" answered her father, who apparently knew his daughter's ways pretty well. But just then Mrs. Gordon, rising, put a stop to her further reply.

As the ladies passed out of the room Miss Lizzy made a half-shy look at Charley, who stood at the door, and reddened-up again when she caught him looking smilingly at her, which clearly enough showed how unjust and groundless had been her father's charge.

"No doubt," continued the Major, after Charley had resumed his chair, "no doubt there will be a little trouble, and you may have to look after yourselves out there, but we shall soon have Mr. Huru. Colonel Clair is after him by this time with the Rangers, and unless Huru takes to the King country and doubles back the Colonel will very likely get-up with him. I hope the rascal won't cut the wires."

"But will the King shelter him?" asked Philip, alluding to the Maori chief who had, in direct contradiction to the Treaty of Waitangi, lately set-up the title of King, and openly defied the authority of the Queen by closing his country to the whites.

"I can't say," replied the Major. "It is very likely he will, as he is allowed to shelter all the murderers and villains in the country side. A Maori now-a-days has only to murder a white or two to be petted and caressed by the King and his people.

"Why doesn't the Government depose him, Major," asked Charley, sipping his wine and preparing to light the cigar that he had selected from the Major's box.

"Depose him," laughed the Major, "Why, man, if we don't look out the King is very likely to depose the Government. He wants to know now what business we have in the country at all at all."

Charley and Philip remained silent, not being acquainted with all the intricacies of Maori troubles.

"Yes," continued the Major, pursuing his own train of thoughts, "it is very likely that Huru will create a disturbance, and the worst of it is that these disturbances always spread. We shall have the natives here kicking up a noise, I suppose. However, Easthorpe, don't you alarm yourself unnecessarily, and here the Major knocked the ash off his cheroot. If you will take a bit of advice from me, I advise you to look after your cattle and sheep out at Terua until you are told to let them look after themselves."

"Thank you, Major," replied Charley, and from the quiet tone in which he spoke, Philip knew that Charley would follow the advice.

"You should keep friends with the natives about you," continued the Major, "as you will learn a good deal from them. Do you intend making a long stay in this part of the country, Mr. Manning," enquired he of Philip.

"I really have not made up my mind," replied Philip. If broken bones require setting I may as well be here as anywhere else."

"Manning is a bit of a saw-bones," said Charley laying back in his chair, and gazing upon Philip as a sort of medical curiosity, not knowing much about his powers in that line, and thinking him a better hand with a stock-whip than a lancet.

"Ah, indeed," said the Major, courteously thankful for the information. "Then if anything happens out at Terua you will be in safe hands, having a medical man with you."

"I don't know that," laughed Charley, and Philip smiled, pretty well guessing at what Charley was hinting.

Here Miss Lizzy Gordon's entrance created a move, that young lady returning to look for a book on one of the sideboards. Whereupon her father caught her, and wished to know what she meant by disturbing gentlemen during their after-dinner smoke?"

"I really beg your pardon, papa," said his daughter, standing near his chair, while the soft light of the dinner-lamp fell upon her white dress and pleasant face, "but mamma wanted her book."

"Then mamma will have to wait a little, and you must just sit down until we finish our cigars," said the Major, but directly he let her go she was off. "It is a curious yet strange circumstance how it comes to pass that girls do not like singly to face the after-dinner cigar. Instances are on record in which a couple have together ventured to brave the danger, but these are rare and exceptional cases, and can only be considered in the light of a lusus naturæ. Now, nothing tends to the degraded subjection of English women more than this special banishment to the drawing-room, and why the 'strong-minded Women's Rights' person does not rebel is a mystery. Here is a grand opening for agitation literally thrown away, yet what a deal of agitation it would take to break-down the invisible bands of even one of the slightest of our social customs, the Women's-Rights person to the contrary notwithstanding.