Sleep in the Woods

by Dorothy Eden

  At last the work was done. She handed the flag to Mabel. “Give it to them.”

  Mabel waddled across and suddenly, with a gesture of disdain, threw it at them.

  One of them made a sharp angry sound. The chief held up a detaining hand. His face was quite impassive. He was very handsome, Briar noticed now, with curly dark hair, a fine forehead and a magnificent nose. He could have been at the court of Caesar, or followed the armies of Hector or Agamemnon on a field in Greece. The sun had darkened his skin and he wore different raiment. That was all. The royal air remained.

  He made a short sharp utterance, turned, and all at once they were all gone. The doorway was empty. Only the cold wind swept in.

  Katie promptly began to have hysterics. She laughed and sobbed and declared that she was nearly dead from fright. Briar told her sharply to be quiet, and herself went and closed the door and bolted it. She was trying desperately not to have hysterics herself. The palms of her hands were wet, her head spinning.

  “Why didn’t they kill us, Mabel? They meant to when I had mended their flag. Didn’t they?”

  Mabel touched the greenstone tiki on Briar’s breast. “They said you were tapu, missus.”

  “Tapu?”

  “Not to be touched. Magic. That was lucky for you, missus. They were very bad men from the Waikato tribe.”

  “And now I’ve mended their flag so they can fight again,” Briar said ruefully. But her fear was leaving her. An enormous feeling of relief that she was still alive, that no one was harmed, and that her lovely house still stood was filling her.

  She said briskly, “Pull yourself together, Katie. You’re not hurt. I think we’ll all have a little of the master’s brandy, kept for emergencies like this. Oh dear! What about the shepherds? Have they got ambushed and killed?”

  “I’ll soon see,” said Mabel. “But I don’t think they’re dead. I think they’re hiding in the bush. Oh yes, I think so.”

  Her assumption was apparently correct, for shortly afterwards the night was rent with wild war whoops, and presently the two men, pursued by Mabel, brandishing a stick and shouting ferociously, “I kill you, you cowards! You hid in the ferns! Pi korry, I kill you!” burst into the kitchen.

  They were overcome with shame, but they had no guns, and they had thought the house was surrounded by hostile natives. At any moment they had expected it to go up in flames. They were not as cowardly as Mabel had supposed, but helpless to do anything.

  “You will go into the village for the night now, Mrs. Whitmore?”

  “Now? When the danger is over? Oh no, I’ll stay here. If Katie wishes to go, one of you can take her. And I want a message taken immediately to someone responsible reporting this. It may mean Te Kooti is near. So the alarm must be given. But I shall stay here in my own house.”

  Katie, after a moment of indecision, went to stand beside her. “I shall stay, too,” she declared. “I was scared to death, but now I don’t mind so much. I never really thought I’d see Hauhaus so close.” The unaccustomed brandy had gone to her head. She had forgotten how afraid she had been, and was remembering the muscles rippling under the shining brown skins, the flashing eyes and proud curling lips.

  Those brown men, they made her feel queer.

  XVIII

  THE INVADERS disappeared like mist before the wind. Although all the available men were collected and a search party formed, no trace was found of the little force. Even their footprints were concealed.

  They had the ability to disappear into thin air, and like Mabel Kingi’s ancestor dwelling in Mount Egmont could almost have gone up in a plume of smoke, or flown on the wings of mountain birds.

  Only Doctor MacTavish, returning late from an outlying farm where he had been attending a sick child, thought he saw a movement in the bush and took a pot shot from his buggy. Then, not stopping to investigate, for the shadowy form may have had many companions, he had whipped up his horse and hurried home.

  Briar went to the village the next day to take her first reading class. Although she still jumped at her own shadow, she tried to maintain an air of calm. It was the duty of pioneer women not to get into a state of panic. She would not admit that her proud air was also to cover her feeling of guilt for not having obeyed Saul, and for placing other people besides herself in danger.

  In the village the story of her coolness and presence of mind had preceded her and become greatly exaggerated. The women gathered around her, exclaiming and asking questions. The fear and tension was easily detectable beneath their vivacity.

  “Oh, Mrs. Whitmore, how could you sit and sew? I’d have fainted from fright—”

  “Of course, if you’d had young children to think of—”

  “Did they really hold tomahawks over your head?”

  “Do you know that was Te Wepu you mended. The Whip. They say Te Kooti won’t go into battle without it. Couldn’t you have put it on the fire?”

  “And have her head cut off? Don’t be so daft, Amy Perkins! If I could have even threaded a needle in those conditions I’d have been mighty proud of myself.”

  But one person who was not full of admiration was Martha Peabody. When the others had gone back to their cottages she spoke severely to Briar.

  “I thought Saul told you to come to the village as soon as he’d gone. How’d he feel if he came home to find you tomahawked or shot?”

  Briar had enjoyed the admiration of the other women. She didn’t care for Martha’s direct gaze. She was being chided like a servant, and no one had any right to do that.

  She lifted her chin. “But I’m not either of those things, Martha. I’m not even hurt.”

  “You might have been, and then Saul would spend the rest of his life blaming himself.”

  Briar’s eyes flashed. “Oh, you’re just thinking of Saul!”

  “I’m thinking of you both, my dear. You’re young and you have so much ahead. None of us can afford to take risks, but some can be spared more than others. And that’s a fact. But at least you kept your head when you had to,” she added fairly. “Saul will be proud of that.”

  Unaccountably tears sprang to Briar’s eyes. She was suffering from reaction, she told herself. She had had very little sleep for two nights, and her head seemed to be permanently tilted in a listening position. Saul would not be proud of her. He would be even more angry than he had been when he went away. He would have no sympathy for the fact that when it came to the point she behaved coolly and well, but would only be conscious that she had disobeyed him. Perhaps he would be sorry that she had not died at the hands of the Maoris, and thus rid himself of a difficult and troublesome wife. It was a chilling thought to realize that he might wish her dead.…

  Saul, riding home by starlight, heard the news long before he reached Lucknow. He encountered a straggle of tired searchers who had been on the move for twenty-four hours, and they told him of his wife’s ordeal, and with what flying colors she had emerged from it.

  At that moment Saul was in no mood to appreciate Briar’s courage. He was, as she had anticipated, furious that she had disobeyed him. He was also suffering some remorse for his own behavior. He had known he should not leave Lucknow, even for a night. Business had to be attended to in New Plymouth, but he could have sent someone else to do that. One of the shepherds would have been reliable enough. But the discovery of his wife’s feelings about the prospect of bearing a child had deeply shocked and dismayed him. He had thought every woman naturally desired a child, even if she did not necessarily love its father. But not Briar, apparently. Not his infuriating unpredictable wife.

  He had felt caught in a trap. Why had he been taken in by a girl’s sparkling eyes and a promise of spirit and warmth that was not there? His mother was right. He had been fooled, and he was to pay the price for his blindness for the rest of his life. Every morning he was to awake beside the cool remote form of his wife, and every evening crush his resentment about her damned untouchable quality, her air of suffering his embraces only because it w
as her duty.

  Soon, he knew, he would not be able to bring himself to touch her at all, and then what lay ahead? A desert, a wilderness of nights when each lay on his own side of the bed, afraid to move lest the movement be misinterpreted. What sort of a cage was that to live in? And who, in heaven’s name, had invented the sacredness of double beds? Scandal or not, he would move to another room and, when the Maori menace died down, he would make more and more frequent journeys to New Plymouth and Wellington. He did not intend to be shackled.

  But it was galling to admit that his mother had been right about Briar. She was nothing but a scheming servant girl seeking security and importance. In spite of her brilliant eyes that could so unnervingly fill with tears, and her soft quivering lips. She was a clever actress. Even her modesty and alarm on her wedding night must have been assumed to conceal her distaste for him, for he would warrant she would not behave like that with all men.

  Nevertheless, she did have courage. It was easy enough to visualize the cool proud tilt of her head as she obeyed the command of the savages. But that did not excuse her from her deliberate evasion of his own instructions. He would never have gone away had he known she intended to stay at Lucknow. What sort of a man did he look, leaving his wife unprotected while he rode off for thirty-six hours?

  That was the canker that bit at him and drew his brows down in anger. Also he had been riding ceaselessly for twelve hours. He was too tired to cope with this new happening. He was also bedeviled by a crazy dream that he would arrive home to find his wife waiting to fly into his arms.

  She did not run to meet him, of course. She did not even get up from her chair, but sat over her sewing, as calm as she must have been the previous evening when watched by far more savage and hostile eyes. He could not know that, for all her composure, she had been sitting with her ears alert to the slightest sound, controlling her trembling and starting at the rattle of a window or the sudden cry of a bird, as she had done ever since the previous night.

  “Well, Saul, you’re back,” she said quietly.

  He towered over her, spattered with mud, weary, puzzled and angry. He wanted to tell her that he was thankful she was still alive, but her remote face made him become as stiff as she was.

  “You didn’t do as I told you.”

  She broke a thread, and shook her head slightly. “I was not afraid to stay here.”

  “Do you realize you might have died? Katie, too.”

  A rueful expression crossed her face. “Yes, I do, Saul. I’m sorry about Katie. I should have made her go.”

  “But not yourself?”

  “I preferred to stay in my home.”

  So that was it, as his mother had predicted. She was mercenary and acquisitive and ambitious. She wanted merely to own a house that was, by this country’s standards, very superior. As to being Mrs. Saul Whitmore and waiting anxiously and impatiently for her husband to return, such emotions seemed to be beyond her understanding.

  “I’m sorry if you are angry! I disobeyed you,” she went on.

  “That’s the least of it! Don’t you realize how near you came to death? Weren’t you afraid?”

  “Of course I was afraid. But if there had been no one here they’d most likely have burned down the house. As it was, I did what they asked and it was all right.”

  He caught a glimpse of her eyes, enormous and dilated, before she dropped them over her work again. He realized that she had been very frightened, and still was, and a reluctant admiration stirred in him.

  “I shouldn’t have left you,” he admitted grudgingly.

  “But everything’s well, Saul. I wouldn’t be surprised if Te Kooti or his men never come near this house again. It might be tapu now. So that will be something I have achieved, won’t it? And I declare that silly Katie hasn’t been the same since. Mooning about forgetting all her tasks as if she’s in love! But you’ll want some food. Here I am sitting chattering. Did you have a good journey?”

  “Fair enough.”

  “You’re back very quickly.”

  He nodded. He would not admit to this strange woman, suddenly as talkative as the simpering girls in Wellington, that he had made haste back. Her garrulity had temporarily puzzled him and put him off his guard.

  “And your business was satisfactorily accomplished?”

  He nodded again, then added briefly, “I’ve brought some material, chintz and lace. You’ll want to pretty up the house for guests.”

  “That’s wonderful! Can I see the things now?”

  At the mention of presents her face had lit up like a child’s, and Saul’s cold reason came back. He must always remind himself in future that her pleasure and that bright-eyed look he had so misinterpreted could be bought.

  But it seemed that she also had notions about payment.

  For when at last, dog-tired and postponing it until the last minute so that she might be asleep, he went upstairs, he found the candles still burning, and Briar not in bed, but sitting in front of the dressing table brushing her hair.

  The soft dark cloud fell over her shoulders and around her face, which looked small and fine-featured and very young. She had on her high-necked long-sleeved nightgown, but the sleeves fell back over her slender wrists, and her breasts were outlined gently against the fine tucking and hemming.

  That small still face, burnished with the candlelight, was going to haunt him all his life, he thought irrelevantly, before anger and contempt swept over him.

  So she was turning into a coquette, was she? Not only the visit of the Maoris, but his abrupt leaving her had frightened her. She had seen the respectable façade of her marriage collapsing. But did she think he was simple enough to be seduced by this coquettish display of the loving wife? He had given her credit for more intelligence. After her previous display of restrained shivering dislike, did she imagine he could be deceived by her tumbling into his arms?

  But this game was one that he as well could play. He threw off his clothes and yawned prodigiously. “I haven’t slept for thirty-six hours. Hurry and put out the light.”

  He was not unaware of her quick sideways glance, although he appeared to be occupied with getting into bed.

  “I must first tie back my hair,” she said composedly, and for the next few minutes her shadow moved tantalizingly across the wall. Little slut! thought Saul furiously.

  He shut his eyes and was to all outward appearances sound asleep when at last she had blown out the candles and slipped into bed.

  His contempt for her deviousness kept him immobile. The picture imprinted on his eyes of a beautiful seductive woman at her mirror was a dream. She would vanish at his touch.

  He was not to know how bewildered and deeply humiliated she was by the rejection of her advances. Her instinct had told her so surely that this was the only way to make amends for their quarrel, and although she had felt like a harlot sitting there in the candlelight, brushing her hair, she had made herself do so.

  But he had not wanted her. Either from genuine tiredness, or because his passion for her was not so strong after all, or because he had still not forgiven her, he had turned away.

  And now they lay side by side in their prison …

  XIX

  IT WAS TRUE that Katie had suddenly become dreamy and unreliable, dropping what she was doing to stop and listen, or to go to the window and gaze across the green fields to the edge of the bush. Briar spoke sharply to her several times, asking what had bewitched her wits, and wondering privately if the fright of the visit from the Maoris had affected her brain. Mabel Kingi was openly scornful of her forgetfulness, and as for the two shepherds who had been competing for her attentions, they now received critical and almost contemptuous glances, as if they were beneath her regard.

  But it was only a strange dream she was living in. The reality did not come until two days later.

  It was mid-afternoon, and she had taken the billy can of hot tea to the men clearing the bush, scything and chopping at the tough fern and flax and
bracken to bring into the sunlight more good grazing land. On her way home, a good quarter mile from where the men were working, she had seen, shining in the shadowy forest, a branch of brilliant rata blossom.

  The bright color pleased her, and she decided to take some home to decorate the house. Without a thought of danger she plunged into the forest, out of sight from the fields or the house. Then abruptly something closed like fingers around her ankle and she fell. It was one of those tough twisted fern roots, she told herself, and began to scramble to her feet. For a moment she had had a fright. It was just as if she had been grabbed, she thought, giggling shakily. And then she fell again as the same thing tightened its grip on her ankle.

  It was a snake, she thought wildly. She was panic stricken as she caught a glimpse of something brown in the undergrowth. She gave a scream, and there came a sharp grunt from somewhere, and then, paralyzingly, a deep voice, “No noise, please!”

  Katie sat down abruptly, kicking the ferns away, and saw the brown face and the great brown eyes staring at her. The naked sinewy arm that stretched out gripping her ankle was indeed like a snake, but a human one, supple and warm.

  “What—what do you want?” she gasped.

  “Food!”

  Katie’s eyes dilated. Did he mean to eat her? “Why—don’t you get some, then?” she asked, with all the boldness she could muster.

  The Maori dragged himself a little towards her. He pointed to his leg. “Hurt,” he said in his terse voice. “Hungry. Get food.”

  So he was wounded and unable to move! Katie’s first reaction was one of intense relief. She was not to provide a cannibal feast at this moment.

  “I can’t do much while you hold my ankle like that.”