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The Greenstone Door

Chapter XVII I Return Home

page 236

Chapter XVII I Return Home

Within a week after severing my connection with the Bromparts I set out for home, and not until the first step was taken did peace and contentment of mind return to me. I had thought that with the loss of Helenora I had plumbed the depths of wretchedness, but those few days before my resolution was taken were surely the most miserable of my existence. For all youth's weakness, life has no sterner moralist. I can smile now in my old age, and find excuse for my conduct, but I held myself despicable then. I could not dismiss the thought of Sarah from my mind. Her warm kisses still clung to my lips. The salt of her tears was in my mouth. I hated her for the hold she had on my imagination, yet day after day I haunted the streets in the hope that I might see her again. I did not admit to myself that it was so, yet the hateful knowledge was there, deep down, covered with a multiplicity of self-deceits.

Mr. Brompart was very anxious that the breach with his family should be healed. When he became convinced of the impossibility of this, he still urged the advantages of a partnership, going to the length of reducing his terms from two hundred nd fifty to a mere hundred pounds. "It is simply because I like you, Cedric, that I make the offer. We could work well together, and there is money to be made, my boy. This is going to be a great city. The hundred pounds is neither here nor there. I don't page 237especially need it, but Mr. Purcell would naturally prefer to pay something. What?"

"I am afraid it is of no use, Mr. Brompart. I am very much obliged to you all the same."

"Now, now!" he exclaimed, with a persuasive cock of his head. "You are hipped, you know. I have said that it was a scoundrelly thing for the boys to do. I have apologised for everything. I never was sorrier and more annoyed. And—by the way—Sarah has told me something about you lending them money. That was wrong of you. Come, come! How much?" And he began to fumble with his cash-box.

"Sarah was probably misinformed on that point," I replied. "At all events, I have forgotten all about it."

"You are a strange lad," he said meditatively, and bit his forefinger, a habit he had when puzzled. "You won't change your mind? Hark in your ear. This will be a great city. I know what will make it so."

"What, sir?" I asked; then added bitterly: "It had a great man in its midst and practically cast him out. Will its citizens grow in prosperity by making drafts on the future? Can they rise to greatness by selling one another building allotments?"

"Tush!" he exclaimed, half angrily. "You are cranky on that subject. Sir George Grey—may he never return! —has poisoned your mind. But we'll let that be. Auckland will be great in spite of him, and I know what will make it so. Gold!" He breathed the word in a whisper, his sharp eyes fixed on my face. "Gold! Come in with me. I know something."

But I shook my head. I had not lived the life that gives that word a supreme charm for the sons of men.

"Bah!" he exclaimed, leaning back. "You are an ass. What will you do, then?"

"I shall go home and help my father," I replied; and page 238even as I spoke the words the will and desire to be gone flooded mind and heart. At once my plans were made. Already I was burning to put them in execution. "I shall start to-morrow," I continued, and held out my hand to bid him farewell.

"How?" he asked, "There is no boat for the best part of a month."

"I shall walk, Mr. Brompart. The trails are good. Or I can pick up a canoe and do nine-tenths of the journey on the rivers. I shall be there under a week."

"If you don't get shot or tomahawked on the road," he supplemented.

"That is a townsman's idea," I assured him. "The Maoris are not the savages you citizens imagine them. If I die of anything it will be from the excess of their hospitality."

"I wish I had your knowledge of them," he said enviously. "I could make a fortune. The whole trouble comes of not knowing them."

It is more than probable that behind those words lurked the reason why he was so anxious that I should join him in business. He had thrown out many hints on the subject of land purchases during the years I had been with him, but I invariably threw cold water on the idea that I could in any way assist him in his desires.

"Well, it is no use talking," he broke off with a sigh. "You are an impractical young man, and your mind is made up. Give my respects to your foster-father, and, by the way, I hope your little difference with the boys won't affect—eh?"

I assured him that his business relations with my father would not be injured by what had occurred, for so far as I was concerned the affair was already forgotten. And so we parted.

I left my luggage in care of the landlord of the inn, to page 239be dispatched by the first boat, and with a light pikau1 on my back and a strong pair of soles on my feet, set out at daylight the following morning on my journey.

I shall not recall the incidents of that long tramp, well as I remember them. I had done longer and more strenuous travels with Sir George Grey and Bishop Selwyn, but never before had I taken the track alone. Solitude was what I desired. I was sick of the noise and bustle of the town, the never-ending hurry for wealth so incomprehensible to me. I wanted to be alone with myself—that new other self which had sprung into prominence from some unsuspected depth or shallow of my nature, and lowered my pride and confidence. I would have it out with him in the wide silent spaces of Nature, whose children we both were. Depend upon it, there is no medicine for the mind that is sick equal to a lonely tramp amid new scenes. The physical effort, not violent but continuous, the health-giving air, the deep, dreamless, well-earned sleep—these are the things that renew the body and refresh the soul.

The weather was perfect. Nature seemed at a standstill, dreaming of the past summer, forgetful as yet of the winter. I did but little of the journey on the water—the end, and a stretch in the middle only. The remainder was over the fern-clad hills or along the root-crossed, echoing forest trail. I steered by the stars, by the beckoning summit of Pirongia, and by the knowledge picked up from the natives of the direction of the ancient ways. At night I yielded to the mood of the moment, either seeking the hospitality of a neighbouring village, or avoiding it and making my bed beneath the starry counterpane. And as my body grew in health, my mind gained sanity. Sarah's kisses cooled on my lips. As a comet she had come, appearing suddenly from the unknown: as a comet she faded from my vision. At last she was gone, and there in the page 240sky, clear and steadfast and undimmed, was the star of Helenora.

So, when the journey was accomplished, I rounded the bend of the river, where I had seen the timber rafts emerge from the gloom of the bush years before, and saw the evening planet shining in the sky, and the fresh-lit lamps of my home below.

Why had I waited so long? How came it that in my misery I had forgotten my father's, words, spoken on just such an evening as this? Wherefore do we hasten with our trivial injuries to those we love, yet bear our deepest wounds in silence? A flood of tender recollections came over me as I moored the boat to the tying-post, and on eager feet hastened up to the house. The veranda doors stood open, and there, as I had pictured it, was the familiar room, with the table spread for the evening meal. My father's book for the night lay ready on a table near the window, his long clay pipe and tobacco jar beside it. I could have laughed and wept as my eye fell upon them. And he was there, talking to a tall young girl, whose glorious brown hair fell in gleaming ringlets to her waist. Who could it be but Puhi-Huia, grown into a woman? The door opened and in came Roma, bearing a dish in her hand.

I had been tortured with the thought that I should find some dread change—even death itself had been among my forebodings of the last few hours—but there they all were, safe and sound, before my eyes. I delayed no longer, but, reckless of the shock my unexpected coming must give them burst into the room.

"Father, father! It is I at last!"

I saw the muscles of his face tremble; then their arms were round me and mine round them. Roma, spilling the contents of her dish on the floor, stood aloof, moaning to herself, but I would not have it so. Resolutely, even fiercely, I drew her, dish and all, into the circle of our page 241embraces. Brown or white, she was all the mother my life had known.

How well do I remember that autumn evening! Ten thousand nights are utterly forgotten, but that one remains. I feel the cool air rising from the river, and see the curtains moving in the open window. There is a dish of peaches on the table, crimson and gold in the glow of the lamplight. Books are everywhere, but no one touches them. We talk of simple things, and are vastly amused over quite trivial jests and events. My father is unusually talkative; not once does his mind pass into the clouds wherein, as a mountain summit, it is wont to dwell. A moderate smoker, he empties pipe after pipe. Surely the scent of the tobacco is in my nostrils now. Merciful Heaven! As I recall that night and think of what remains to be recorded, my heart fails me. I am tempted to lay down the pen and write no more.

The next day I took up the work I had set myself to do. My father's business had become almost unwieldy in its dimensions. The single store had thrown off shoots, until now its branches extended over a territory as large as an English county. Up and down the river, through the open country, by devious forest trails, our punts and packs were for ever on the move. During the three years of my absence a great change had come over the district. The huddled cultivations at the feet of the pas had spread out into great areas gilded over with wheat. Food-plants covered the rich virgin soil, and everywhere work was in progress with a view to extending their domain. The age of the musket had passed away. Cattle and horses, agricultural implements and seed were now the things dear to and desired of the chiefs.

When the history of the Maori as a separate people comes to be recorded, the years of which I am now to speak page 242will surely be regarded as the halcyon time of the race. A profound peace—the first for centuries—had settled on the land. The people had advanced sufficiently far into civilisation to perceive its grandeur and beauty, yet not so far that they had lost confidence in themselves and their possibilities. An enthusiasm had sprung up for the things and ideas of the white people, and no voice had been raised to chill them with its warning—Thus far shalt thou go and no farther.

The valleys of the Waipa and the Waikato became great gardens and granaries. The soil needed but tickling to smile in plenty. Fungoid and other vegetable parasites had not yet swept over and conquered the country; and, for almost the first time in the history of New Zealand, food of the highest quality existed, not merely in plenty but in superfluity. In comparison with the ancient methods it was easily produced—too easily, perhaps; yet, unless we regard work as itself an end, undue weight may easily be given to that argument.

There were other causes at work to destroy this promising beginning, and most potent of these was the steady influx of the whites. Left to himself, with the knowledge he had already gained, the Maori might have gone on, accumulating strength with the passing of the generations, until at length he was fitted to march side by side with his white brother. But the inrush of emigrants brought him daily into closer contact with them; the pace they set him was too swift; the grandeur of the temple of civilisation ceased to inspire, and now appalled and oppressed him. He hesitated, stopped and drew back, and even if war had not intervened to blot from the land the last traces of his labours and ambitions, it is doubtful if he would ever again have essayed the road, the first steps of which he had trodden in such hope and delight.

But I am only at the first days of my return. Their page 243leisure moments were spent in picking up the threads of the old life and renewing the friendships and acquaintances of my boyhood. Allowing for the great physical change which occurs between the ages of fifteen and nineteen years I was probably less altered to them than they were to me. For the first time the gulf between the pakeha and the Maori became evident to me. It even obtruded itself, and many months elapsed before I again found myself back at somewhere near the old standpoint. Te Moanaroa, to whom I went to pay my respects on the morning after my return, was my first disappointment. He had grown more obese and short-winded. Always inclined to gluttony, I fear the years of peace and plenty had done him more harm than good. The grossness of his body had reacted on his mind, for it seemed to me now that his eye was cunning rather than sagacious.

But it was Rangiora I most desired to see, and I should have tramped off to Pahuata to seek him out, had he not saved me the task by himself coming to the house. Although I have been too busy with other matters to allude to him, I had not lost touch with my boyhood's friend during all this while. I had written to him many times and received in response quaint and stilted compositions in English, most beautifully engrossed in a large hand, the which I could by no manner of means reconcile with my memories of the dear fellow. After a while I changed my own language to Maori, but he did not take the hint, and the careful compositions continued to arrive at intervals and perplex me as before. However, here he was in the flesh and—thank goodness!—willing to greet me in his own language. He had grown a great fellow in the interval. Though he fell short of the proportions of the Great One, who was the only man of my acquaintance who could rival my foster-father in stature, he was fully two inches taller than I, and yet of such breadth and shapeliness that it page 244was only when you ran a tape over him that you learned how big he really was.

After his pleasure at my unexpected return had abated in the fervour of its expression, I began to notice a kind of absorption and dejection in his manner, recurring at intervals as though there were something on his mind which he could not shake off. Whether this had connection with another discovery I made at the same time I could not determine. Sometimes I thought it had. At others I was not so sure, or even convinced that it was not so. This other discovery was that he loved Puhi-Huia. Set a thief to catch a thief, and a lover a lover. I could not but observe how his eyes dwelt upon her and followed her movements; how quick he was to foresee her wants and supply them; how attentively he listened when she spoke, and how gentle was his voice when he addressed her. Of Puhi-Huia herself in this new connection I could make nothing. Neither word nor look revealed her. Her appearance of complete serenity may have been the mask instinctive to her sex, but if so it never slipped. My friendship for Rangiora was no slight thing, yet I found myself wondering if it would stand the test of this discovery. It was natural with one brought up as I had been that colour should not assume that immense importance it has in the eyes of the ordinary white man; yet it was there, a creation of my three years in Auckland. But far more potent than this in giving me a vague sense of dissatisfaction and uneasiness was the new-born knowledge of the disparity that existed between the inheritor of civilisation and the child of savage parents. True that Puhi-Huia was a half-caste; she was yet a white in her ways and instincts, and neither in colour, form, nor feature did she favour the savage half of her descent. The dark blood had lent a subtle glow to her beauty, no more. I am not sure that there was not something mean and paltry in my first view page 245of the matter; but no sister could have been dearer to me than Puhi-Huia. I doubt if I could have welcomed any man to the position of her lover. There was probably only one person alive who would, in my opinion, have made her an entirely satisfactory husband, and his affections were already engaged elsewhere.

Full of such perplexing thoughts, I looked at Rangiora with new eyes, and I was the better able to do so that there was little about him to recall the boy I had known. I could not dispute that, despite his brown skin—for he had not inherited his father's fairness—he was pleasant to look upon. His features were of the Roman type, strong and clearly defined; his eyes dark, liquid, and intelligent; and even the ill-fitting suit he wore could not conceal the symmetry of his figure. One might have travelled a long way without finding a finer man. So much was satisfactory; but had his brain kept pace with his body? One may be drawn to marry a body, but must live with a mind.

He was not very talkative, and I did not succeed in rousing him to animation until I began to speak of the old days in the cave.

"I have not been there since my friend left," he said at last. "It is too full of memories."

"Then we will revive them together," said I. "We will go to-morrow."

He looked at Puhi-Huia, who was busy setting the table for tea, but, though she must have heard what we were saying, and understood the inquiry in his gaze, she gave no sign.

"Stop here to-night," I continued, "and we will go by water. Even if the tunnel be still there, I expect we have both grown too big for it."

He agreed, and the expedition was duly carried out. Up to the moment of our departure, I think he was in hopes page 246that Puhi-Huia would accompany us. She did come down to the river bank to see us start.

"Will not the Plume of the Huia come also?" he asked.

"No, Rangi," she replied gently. Then added, smiling —"I am not so bold as I used to be. You must make a stairway up the cliff for me."

He took her words seriously, and, as we went on our way, discussed the possibility of giving effect to the idea. "I have but a knife with me," said he; "if it were a tomahawk something might be accomplished."

"She could get up as quickly as either of us," I said, giving tongue to my irritation at last. "It was but a polite way of saying that she did not desire to come."

He was silent. Probably he needed no telling, and was merely deceiving himself, as lovers will; but for some reason his silence increased my annoyance and goaded me into speech.

"Are you, perhaps, thinking too much of Puhi-Huia, Rangiora?" I asked.

"True," he said—"if to think of her all the time be too much."

"Well, but, my friend," I continued with forced calm, "that is idle of you. You must know that nothing can come of it. Or are you so lost to reason as to suppose that you can marry the daughter of the Thumb?"

"So also has the Great One reproved me," he said quietly. "Yet if she were the lowliest slave-girl in the pa, she would still be to me as a queen to whom I must render homage."

"What!" I exclaimed, now fairly exasperated. "Does Te Huata forbid you to marry her on the ground that she is of lower rank than yourself."

"It is not my thought," he replied in the same tone. "No such talk could rise between Puhi-Huia and myself. page 247Yet it is no doubt hard for my father to forget that I am of the blood of——"

But this was too much, and I cut him short with a burst of scornful laughter that derided him and his gods.

I saw his face change and a look of pained incredulity gather in his eyes. And in that moment of madness there came to me a vision. On the bush trail were two children —a girl and a boy. The boy's face was sick and white and his step slow and uncertain, for Death had passed close to him and the ice of his breath still curdled in his veins. The girl's arm was around the boy, supporting him. I could hear her voice, still and clear in my mind. "How kind and brave is Rangiora! If he be not descended from the gods, at least he acts as if he were." A great revulsion of feeling came over me. I raised my hand to my forehead, and, as though by that physical act, wiped away the evil thing from my brain. "Forgive me, Rangi," I said. "I know not what imp of madness came over me."

"Is it love, brother?" he asked, in a whisper of fear.

"Not of the man for the woman. The brother for the sister, if that admits of jealousy. But it is gone. Speak to me of your love."

And he told me, in musical sentences tinged with poetic beauty, how the thing had grown with his youth, till now in his young manhood it possessed him.

"And Puhi?" I asked presently.

"Who can tell of her when kindness ends and love begins?" he said. "Alas! it is a hard trail on which my feet are set, and I would tread it alone until it brings me to her door. The Great One has chosen a maiden of high descent and of an ugliness inconceivable, and he urges her upon me. Nor is the maiden herself backward, being come to her sixteenth year and still husbandless by reason of the greatness of her birth."

"But this is the new age, Rangiora," I said. "It lies page 248along the road of the white man and not the ancient track of the Maori. There only may you advance yourself to greatness."

"So does the matter show itself to me," agreed Rangiora, "and so have I spoken to the Great One. But his heart is of the old time. Quietly he lives, raising not his voice in the council, yet the spirit of bygone days is strong within him. He waits the time when the tribe shall come to him and say—'It is enough. Rise up, O ariki, and drive the pakeha into the sea.'"

"That day will never come," I said confidently. "I remember speaking of this when we were children; but the years pass and the silence becomes deeper."

"That also is true," he said; "yet who can look into the future? It is said in the council—I know not whether the words be true or false—that the power has passed from the governors, and now we shall have many masters. The government will no longer be a man, but a machine, without bowels or judgment. Tell me, friend, greatly travelled, are the white men all of the wisdom of the Thumb, of the good Governor who has gone, of yourself, that they should do this thing?"

"There are many amongst them who love the Maoris," I answered; "who will uphold their rights in the Parliament and take shame to themselves if harm befall them."

It was not until we had reached the cave and renewed our acquaintance with its "ghosts" that Rangiora became communicative of his doings during the years of our separation. He spoke hesitatingly at first, gradually warming under the call of my sympathy until at last he made a clean breast of everything. Then I found that my surmise was correct, and his troubles were not confined to the problematical issue of his love for Puhi-Huia.

He was, he told me, a Christian by conviction. During the vacations of the whare-kura he had lost no oppor-page 249tunity of advancing himself in the knowledge of the faith of the pakeha. He had read the Bible through and through, and found nothing within its covers in conflict with his ideas of the right and the probable. Great and wonderful and full of hope for mankind was the sacred book of the whites. But, alas! the teachings of the whare-kura were not in accord with it, and therein lay the cause of his dejection. He had entered on his work with curiosity and interest, and had learned so rapidly that he had become the star pupil, in whom the hopes of the teachers were centred. The tests which had proved insurmountable to many of the pupils had offered no difficulties to him, and now he was on the eve of the last supreme task, which should release him from his bondage and retire him with honours from the college.

"What are these tests, Rangi?" I asked curiously.

For a while he hesitated. "I am under vows not to betray the secrets of the priests," he said at last; "yet if they be, as I am beginning to think, the servants of the Evil One, it is no sin to do so. Advise me, friend, for my mind is divided."

"It can but be trickery that they practise," I replied speciously. "No good thing was ever yet by necessity kept secret. At all events, here are no ears save ours, and my lips shall be silent."

He looked quickly around him, and, putting his hand in his pocket, drew something out. "It is strange," he said, "that the Evil One should be so active and God so silent. Behold this pebble. Know you any prayer that will give you the power to crush it between your fingers?"

I took the stone from him and examined it. It was round and smooth, as though water-worn, and needed not the point of my knife on its surface to convince me of its extreme hardness.

page 250

"No," said I, smiling; "neither with nor without prayer is it possible."

"Yet I have seen it done, and I myself have accomplished it."

"Then do it now," I challenged him.

He gave a negative gesture and returned the stone to his pocket. "Some dark influence is at work in the whare-kura," he said, "for there the thing impossible comes to pass—not merely the uttering of a spell that causes such a stone to crumble into dust, but the incantation that will take life."

"How?"

"It is known to you, friend, that cruelty is not in the heart of the Maori. Save in the madness of the war passion, he takes no delight in the infliction of pain or death. Cruelty belongs not to a race, but a kind."

I nodded agreement, and waited with interest for more.

"It is by the death-spell that I must gain my freedom.

All other tests I have passed, but this one remains."

"I have heard a whisper of some such thing," I said; "but surely you, Rangiora, with your good sense, are not so foolish as to believe that you can slay by an act of will. If one should die following any act of wizardry of yours, be sure that some deceit has been practised to bring the thing about."

His face showed no lifting of its despondency. "Is it harder to kill a man than a dog?" he asked. "That test I have accomplished; the other awaits me."

"Poison," I said uneasily.

"What poison forbears to strike till the signal be given?"

"Something short of witchcraft must account for it," I objected.

"Has my friend, then, forgotten the incident of the dead tree that became green? What, short of witchcraft, will account for that?"

page 251

"And the final test is the taking of a human life?"

"When the new term ends, such will be my task. The victim will be brought before me, and with a spell must I destroy him."

"Take heart, Rangiora," I said, endeavouring to make light of the matter, though his evident belief in his powers impressed me; "you cannot do it."

"Nor in my case," he went on, unheeding, "will it suffice that I destroy a slave or a person of no importance. They may bring me a well-born child or even a lesser chief, that the power of the gods in their descendant may be clearly demonstrated."

"It is nonsense," said I. "The victim may die of poison or sheer fright, but not by any witchcraft of yours. Shake off this nightmare, Rangiora. Or if you really possess the power, don't wait for the end of the term, but blast Te Atua Mangu at the beginning. That would be a truly meritorious act, worthy the descendant of the gods."

But he was not to be chaffed from his beliefs, and at last I suggested that he should refuse to return to the college.

"That cannot be," he replied. "In one thing must I give way to my father. If not in this, then in the matter of the maiden; and that is a thing beyond me. Behold the light at last."

We had been sitting during this discussion on the spot where as children we had first beheld the drama in stone described in an early part of this history. In the dim light the curtain stood out in ghostly folds, but save for a gleam here and there the stage beyond was in darkness. Suddenly, however, as Rangiora spoke, a shaft of brilliant light pierced the opening, as it had done on that far-off occasion, and no doubt at due intervals from time immemorial, and in an instant the scene stood forth in light page 252and shade, as though it were but that moment created. For a long breath I saw it with the eyes of my childhood —the struggling figures, the fallen hero, the kneeling girl —then it became but a fantastic, meaningless collection of stalagmites. But Rangiora gazed on with rapt vision till the last ray of light had passed; when he rose with a shiver, complaining of the chilliness of the air.

We returned to the canoe soon after that, and I set him ashore on the edge of a track whence he could make his way homeward. Although we had found no solution of his trouble, his manner showed increased cheerfulness. Promising to visit me again before the term began, he went his way.

1 Pikau = package.