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Promenade

II

II

After a few more engagements the Maoris finally re-treated into the wild ramparts about the Urewera country, where it seemed wise to leave them, since not even missionaries had penetrated there. So Parliament grimly assessed the war bill at several millions, exclusive of quite unassessable damage to progression, and went to Wellington in the hope that conditions would be pleasanter, while for Auckland the bottom fell out of things.

“See the withers of the galled jade wince,” said Sir Winston, marching off with yellow wig over his ear in processions of indignant Aucklanders demanding instant separation. Was it to be imagined that they would bear the rule of that upstart town Wellington? They would drown in their mud-flats first.

“Separation might be excellent if we could also separate from our debts,” remarked the Chronicle. “Otherwise, the notion of allowing Wellington to pay them commends itself to us.”

Peregrine selling his houses, at great loss, for such wealth as there was now flowed southward, looked on Wellington as merely a step to Canterbury. Ship-building was dying fast in competition against Wellington and Dunedin, and he meant Jerry to turn Darien out of Bendemeer soon.

But Peregrine had reckoned without the Angel Gabriel. page 366 Gabriel (who must be more of a joker than one thought) had appeared among the Taranaki Maoris, had chosen a gentle madman named Te Ua for his prophet, and immediately proceeded to extremes. Von Tempsky and his Rangers, Whitmore and other Volunteer leaders went out after Te Ua, and found themselves confronted with the most shocking thing yet.

“We have so embittered the Maoris,” wrote Brian, “that they loathe us and our religion, and are setting their subtle wits to debase both. Being very hearty about it—as in all they do—they have soon twisted Te Ua's simple creed of Pai Marire, which I believe means Goodness and Grace, into the most revolting heathenism to be compassed by savage and thwarted souls.”

Roddy was now gone South, and Peregrine (seeing two sons meeting Goodness and Grace in such form) began to wonder seriously if Providence did love him after all. Jermyn, singing in the drawing-room, was a mocker.

To you, to you all love and faith is due.
Only for you the heav'ns forgat all measure.

So sang Jermyn, looking at Sally. Peregrine went out to meet with fury Major Henry's suggestion that they should all go to Australia.

“I will be a hanger-on in no land, sir,” said Peregrine. Surely Gabriel must soon relent.

But Gabriel had now provided the head of an English officer to be stuck on a pole and danced round until the Maori dancers fell frothing at the mouth and the tohungas leapt with glee among the writhing limbs. Old Te Patiti, born and bred on superstition, seized his sticks and danced too, feeling that now we had really got something to destroy the pakeha at last. Soon all pakeha heads would be on poles, soon we would dance England off the earth, thought Te Patiti, reeling over and staring up at the tohungas with entranced eyes. Haini stood unwieldy but majestic among them. She couldn't be a tohunga, but she page 367 could prophesy and did, letting loose long years of hate and longing, while Hemi stood by with bursting heart.

Hemi had weathered the physical war, but this challenged the spirit. Built with Maori art upon the Bible, salted with all dark fanaticism, with mesmerism, with the most bloody of pagan rites, the new religion shook minds which had been stuffed and bewildered by missionaries with undigested texts—minds which were also tormented by the knowledge that the Maori was a beaten race. We warriors couldn't do it. Perhaps Gabriel can, thought Hemi, feeling the frenzy that is in all Maori blood work in him until with a strange wolfish howl he leapt in among the dancers.

Wild and barbarous ritual began shooting up like the upas-tree, and it was soon discovered that any white head on a pole would do. Gabriel would take charge of them all, marching with his converts round the country, destroying and befouling all they touched. Rangers, Constabulary, Volunteers ploughed through the clogging bush after that mad flaunting trumpet, sometimes hearing far-off in a still night the wild cry: “Hapa! Pai-marire. Hau! Hau!”

Gabriel (consulting daily with Jehovah) promised that the cry would turn any English bullet, and in desperation Hemi managed to believe it unless he awoke in the unearthly hour before the dawn and heard the birds. Divine orchestras, such as Tihane had so loved, pouring from those swelling feathered throats, bringing again that beauty which the Hau Haus were denying to the world. Bellbirds intent on their clear morning chiming, tuis loud and glorious up and down their perfect scales, great wood-pigeons booming low melodious basses, fantasias of a thousand robins and wrens, native thrushes going mad with some inner glory, the high chuckling laughter of parrakeets….

Gabriel, do you really want such noises, wondered page 368 Hemi, hearing the Hau Haus raising their morning orisons against the birds. Von Tempsky heard them too; and that night the Rangers, moving almost as silently as Maoris, lay near the Hau Hau camp, dirty and very hungry, having had nothing but the rum-ration for two days. Brian felt disgustedly of his black stubble, wishing he was shaving in Auckland with warm water. Jerry was fretting over Peregrine's desire that he should proceed at once to Canterbury.

“I think Von might let me go,” he muttered to Brian. “I've had near four years of this.”

“I've had five,” retorted Brian. “And there may be another five.”

“It's cursed unfair,” growled Jerry, looking like Uncle John in a temper. “Taking all our youth—”

But war always did that. “So long as it don't take our lives,” said Brian, shrugging. Was this foul thing to go on for ever and ever? He dragged pencil and paper from his knapsack and began a love-letter to Miss Alice Whitman. “There seems no use in even hoping for this trouble to end,” wrote Brian, “and when I think of you I cannot wait. Can you consent to marry me on my next leave, my own dear Blue-Eyes?” And more to the same effect.

A leave for Brian came sooner than he expected. A brush with the Hau Haus next day in a deep shadowed gully, and no Brian at the camp-fire for that night's roll-call. Hemi, who had fought with madness ending in a forced march, thought himself still mad when he saw a familiar dark disdainful head upon a pole, saw a bunch of gold seals and trinkets with the Lovel crest strung round the neck of a leaping maniac. Then all his madness fell from him, and he turned about and walked straight off for a hundred miles or so to old Tamihana, who had long since made his peace with God and man.

“Take me for your slave,” said gaunt tattered Hemi, kneeling down. “For I am not fit to be a chief.”