Color Scheme ra-12

by Ngaio Marsh

  “It’s very kind of you,” said Dikon thoughtfully. He rose to his feet and held out his hand. “I’ll tell Mr. Gaunt about it. Thank you so much.”

  Mr. Questing wrung his hand excruciatingly.

  “Good-bye,” said Dikon politely.

  “I’m staying here to-night, Mr. Bell, and I’ll be right on the spot if…”

  “Oh yes. Perfectly splendid. Good-bye.”

  He returned to his employer.

  Late on the afternoon of Saturday the eighteenth, old Rua Te Kahu sat on the crest of a hill that rose in an unbroken curve above his native village. The hill formed a natural barrier between the Maori reserve lands and the thermal resort of Wai-ata-tapu Springs where the Claires lived. From where he sat Rua looked down to his right upon the sulphur-corroded roof of the Claires’ house, and to his left upon the smaller hip-roofs of his own people’s dwelling houses and shacks. From each side of the hill rose plumes of steam, for the native pa was built near its own thermal pools. Rua, therefore, sat in a place that became him well. Behind his head, and softened by wreaths of steam, was the shape of Rangi’s Peak. At his feet, in the warm friable soil, grew manuka scrub.

  He was an extremely old man, exactly how old he did not choose to say; but his father, a chief of the Te Rarawa tribe, had set his mark to the Treaty of Waitangi, not many years before Rua, his youngest child, was born. Rua’s grandfather, Rewi, a chieftain and a cannibal, was a neolithic man. To find his European counterpart, one would look back beyond the dawn of civilization. Rua himself had witnessed the full impact of the white man’s ways upon a people living in a stone age. He had in turn been warrior, editor of a native newspaper, and member of Parliament. In his extreme age he had sloughed his European habits and returned to his own sub-tribe and to a way of life that was an echo in a minor key of his earliest youth.

  “My great-great-grandfather is a hundred,” bragged little Hoani Smith at the Harpoon primary school. “He is the oldest man in New Zealand. He is nearly as old as God. Hu!”

  Rua was dressed in a shabby suit. About his shoulders he wore a blanket, for nowadays he felt the cold. Sartorially he was rather disreputable, but for all that he had about him an air of greatness. His head was magnificent, long and shapely. His nose was a formidable beak, his lips thin and uncompromising. His eyes still held their brilliance. He was a patrician, and looked down the long lines of his ancestry until they met in one of the canoes of the first Polynesian sea-rovers. One would have said that his descent must have been free from the coarsening of Melanesian blood. But for his colour, a light brown, he looked for all the world like a Jacobite patriot’s notion of a Highland chieftain.

  Every evening he climbed to the top of the hill and smoked a pipe, beginning his slow ascent an hour before sunset. Sometimes one of his grandchildren, or an old crony of his own clan, would go up with him, but more often he sat there alone, lost, as it seemed, in a long perspective of recollections. The Claires, down at the Springs, would glance up and see him appearing larger than human against the sky and very still. Or Huia, sitting on the bank behind the house when she should have been scrubbing potatoes, would wave to him and send him a long-drawn-out cry of greeting in his own tongue. She was one of his many great-grandchildren.

  This evening he found much to interest him down at the Springs. A covered van had turned in from the main road and had lurched and skidded down the track which the Claires called their drive, until it pulled up at their front door. Excited noises came from inside the house. Old Rua heard his great-granddaughter’s voice and Miss Barbara Claire’s unmelodious laughter. There were bumping sounds. A large car came down the track and pulled up at the edge of the sweep. Mr. Maurice Questing got out of it followed by a younger man. Rua leant forward a little, grasped the head of his stick firmly and rested his chin on his knotted hands. He seemed rooted in the hill-top, and part of its texture. After a long pause he heard a sound for which his ears had inherited an acute awareness. Someone was coming up the track behind him. The dry scrub brushed against approaching legs. In a moment or two a man stood beside him on the hill-top.

  “Good evening, Mr. Smith,” said old Rua without turning his head.

  “G’day, Rua.”

  The man lurched forward and squatted beside Te Kahu. He was a European, but his easy adoption of this native posture suggested a familiarity with the ways of the Maori people. He was thin, and baldish. His long jaw was ill-shaved. His skin hung loosely from the bones of his face, and was unwholesome in colour. There was an air of raffishness about him. His clothes were seedy. Over them he wore a raincoat that was dragged out of shape by a bottle in an inner pocket. He began to make a cigarette, and his fingers, deeply stained with nicotine, were unsteady. He smelt very strongly of stale spirits.

  “Great doings down at the Springs,” he said.

  “They seem to be busy,” said Rua tranquilly.

  “Haven’t you heard? They’ve got a big pot coming to stay. That’s his secretary, that young chap that’s just come. You’d think it was royalty. They’ve been making it pretty solid for everybody down there. Hauling everything out and shifting us all round. I got sick of it and sloped off.”

  “A distinguished guest should be given a fitting welcome.”

  “He’s only an actor.”

  “Mr. Geoffrey Gaunt. He is a man of great distinction.”

  “Then you know all about it, do you?”

  “I think so,” said old Rua.

  Smith licked his cigarette and hung it from the corner of his mouth.

  “Questing’s at the back of it,” he said. Rua stirred slightly. “He’s kidded this Gaunt the mud’ll fix his leg for him. He’s falling over himself polishing the old dump up. You ought to see the furniture. Questing!” Smith added viciously. “By cripes, I’d like to see that joker get what’s coming to him.”

  Unexpectedly Rua gave a subterranean chuckle.

  “Look!” Smith said. “He’s got something coming to him all right, that joker. The old doctor’s got it in for him, and so’s everybody else but Claire. I reckon Claire’s not so keen, either, but Questing’s put him where he just can’t squeal. That’s what I reckon.”

  He lit his cigarette and looked out of the corners of his eyes at Rua. “You don’t say much,” he said. His hand moved shakily over the bulge in his mackintosh. “Like a spot?” he asked.

  “No, thank you. What should I say? It is no business of mine.”

  “Look, Rua,” said Smith energetically. “I like your people. I get on with them. Always have. That’s a fact, isn’t it?”

  “You are intimate with some of my people.”

  “Yes. Well, I came up here to tell you something. Something about Questing.” Smith paused. The quiet of evening had impregnated the countryside. The air was clear and the smallest noises from below reached the hill-top with uncanny sharpness. Down in the native reserve a collection of small brown boys milled about, squabbling. Several elderly women with handkerchiefs tied over their heads sat round one of the cooking pools. The smell of steaming sweet potatoes was mingled with the fumes of sulphur. On the other side, the van crawled up to the main road sounding its horn. From inside the Claires’ house hollow bumping noises still continued. The sun was now behind Rangi’s Peak.

  “Questing’s got a great little game on,” said Smith. “He’s going round your younger lot talking about teams of poi girls and kids diving for pennies, and all the rest of it. He’s offering big money. He says he doesn’t see why the Arawas down at Rotorua should be the only tribe to profit by the tourist racket.”

  Rua got slowly to his feet. He turned away from the Springs side of the hill to the east and looked down into his own hamlet, now deep in shadow.

  “My people are well contented,” he said. “We are not Arawas. We go our own way.”

  “And another thing. He’s been talking about having curios for sale. He’s been nosing round. Asking about old times. Over at the Peak.” Smith’s voice slid into an uncertain key.
He went on with an air of nervousness. “Someone’s told him about Rewi’s axe,” he said.

  Rua turned, and for the first time looked fully at his companion.

  “That’s not so good, is it?” said Smith.

  “My grandfather Rewi,” Rua said, “was a man of prestige. His axe was dedicated to the god Tane and was named after him, Toki-poutangata-o-Tane. It was sacred. Its burial place, also, is sacred and secret.”

  “Questing reckons it’s somewhere on the Peak. He reckons there’s a lot of stuff over on the Peak that might be exploited. He’s talking about half-day trips to see the places of interest, with one of your people to act as guide and tell the tale.”

  “The Peak is a native reserve.”

  “He reckons he could square that up all right.”

  “I am an old man,” said Rua affably, “but I am not yet dead. He will not find any guides among my people.”

  “Won’t he! You ask Eru Saul. He knows what Questing’s after.”

  “Eru is not a satisfactory youth. He is a bad pakeha Maori.”

  “Eru doesn’t like the way Questing plays up to young Huia. He reckons Questing is kidding her to find guides for him.”

  “He will not find guides,” Rua repeated.

  “Money talks, you know.”

  “So will the tapu of my grandfather’s toki-poutangata.”

  Smith looked curiously at the old man. “You really believe that, don’t you?” he said.

  “I am a rangitira. My father attended an ancient school of learning. He was a tohunga. I don’t believe, Mr. Smith,” said Rua with a chuckle. “I know.”

  “You’ll never get a white man to credit supernatural stories, Rua. Even your own younger lot don’t think much…”

  Rua interrupted him. The full magnificence of his voice sounded richly on the evening air. “Our people,” Rua said, “stand between two worlds. In a century we have had to swallow the progress of nineteen hundred years. Do you wonder that we suffer a little from evolutionary dyspepsia? We are loyal members of the great commonwealth: your enemies are our enemies. You speak of the young people. They are like voyagers whose canoes are in a great ocean between two countries. Sometimes they behave objectionably and are naughty children. Sometimes they are taught very bad tricks by their pakeha friends.” Rua looked full at Smith, who fidgeted. “There are pakeha laws to prevent my young men from making fools of themselves with whisky and too much beer,” said Rua tranquilly, “but there are also pakehas who help them to break these laws. The pakehas teach our young maidens that they should be quiet girls and not have babies before they are married, but in my own hapu there is a small boy whom we call Hoani Smith, though in law he has no right to that name.”

  “Hell, Rua, that’s an old story,” Smith muttered.

  “Let me tell you another old story. Many years ago, when I was a youth, a maiden of our hapu lost her way in the mists on Rangi’s Peak. In ignorance, intending no sacrilege, she came upon the place where my grandfather rests with his weapons, and, being hungry, ate a small piece of cooked food that she carried with her. In that place it was an act of horrible sacrilege. When the mists cleared, she discovered her crime and returned in terror to her people. She told her story, and was sent out to this hill while her case was discussed. At night she thought she would creep back, but she missed her way. She fell into Taupo-tapu, the boiling mud pool. Everybody in the village heard her scream. Next morning her dress was thrown up, rejected by the spirit of the pool. When your friend Mr. Questing speaks of my grandfather’s toki, relate this story to him. Tell him the girl’s scream can still be heard sometimes at night. I am going home now,” Rua added, and drew his blanket about him with precisely the same gesture that his grandfather had used to adjust his feather cloak. “Is it true, Mr. Smith, that Mr. Questing has said a great many times that when he takes over the Springs, you will lose your job?”

  “He can have it for mine,” said Smith angrily. “That’ll do me all right. He doesn’t have to talk about the sack. When Questing’s the boss down there, I’m turning the job up.” He dragged the whisky bottle from his pocket and fumbled with the cork.

  “And yet,” Rua said, “it’s a very soft job. You are going to drink? I shall go home. Good evening.” iv

  Dikon Bell, marooned in the Claires’ private sitting-room, stared at faded photographs of regimental Anglo-Indians, at the backs of blameless novels, and at a framed poster of the Cotswolds in spring. The poster was the work of a celebrated painter, and was at once gay, ordered, and delicate — a touching sequence of greens and blues. It made Dikon, the New Zealander, ache for England. By shifting his gaze slightly, he saw, framed in the sitting-room window, a landscape aloof from man. Its beauty was perfectly articulate yet utterly remote. Against his will he was moved by it as an unmusical listener may be profoundly disturbed by sound forms that he is unable to comprehend. He had travelled a great deal in his eight years’ absence from New Zealand and had seen places famous for their antiquities, but it seemed to him that the landscape he now watched through the Claires’ window was of an age far more remote than any of these. It did not carry the scars of lost civilization. Rather, it seemed to make nothing of time, for it was still primeval and its only stigmata were those of a neolithic age. Dikon, who longed to be in London, recognized in himself an affinity with this indifferent and profound country, and resented its attraction.

  He wondered what Gaunt would say to it. He was to return to his employer next day by bus and train, a long and fatiguing business. Gaunt had bought a car, and on the following day he, Dikon and Colly would set out for Wai-ata-tapu. They had made many such journeys in many countries. Always at the end there had been expensive hotels or flats and lavish attention — amenities that Gaunt accepted as necessities of existence. Dikon was gripped by a sensation of panic. He had been mad to urge this place with its air of amateurish incompetence, its appalling Mr. Questing, its incredible Claires, whose air of breeding would seem merely to underline their complacency. A bush pub might have amused Gaunt; the Springs would bore him to exasperation.

  A figure passed the window and stood in the doorway. It was Miss Claire. Dikon, whose job obliged him to observe such things, noticed that her cotton dress had been most misguidedly garnished with a neck bow of shiny ribbon, that her hair was precisely the wrong length, and that she used no make-up.

  “Mr. Bell,” said Barbara, “we were wondering if you’d advise us about Mr. Gaunt’s rooms. Where to put things. I’m afraid you’ll find us very primitive. She laid tremendous stress on odd syllables and words, and as she did so turned up her eyes in a deprecating manner and pulled down the corners of her mouth like a lugubrious clown.

  “Comedy stuff,” thought Dikon. “Alas, alas, she means to be funny.” He said that he would be delighted to see the rooms, and, nervously fingering his tie, followed her along the verandah.

  The wing at the east end of the house, corresponding with the Claires’ private rooms at the west end, had been turned into a sort of flat for Gaunt, Dikon and Colly. It consisted of four rooms: two small bedrooms, one tiny bedroom, and a slightly larger bedroom which had been converted into Mr. Questing’s idea of a celebrity’s study. In this apartment were assembled two chromium-steel chairs, one large armchair, and a streamlined desk, all of rather bad design, and with the dealer’s tabs still attached to them. The floor was newly carpeted, and the windows in process of being freshly curtained by Mrs. Claire. Mr. Questing, wearing a cigar as if it were a sort of badge of office, lolled carelessly in the armchair. On Dikon’s entrance he sprang to his feet.

  “Well, well, well,” cried Mr. Questing gaily, “how’s the young gentleman?”

  “Quite well, thank you,” said Dikon, who had spent the greater part of the day motoring with Mr. Questing, and had become reconciled to these constant inquiries.

  “Is this service,” Mr. Questing went on, waving his cigar at the room, “or is it? Forty-eight hours ago I hadn’t the pleasure of your acquaintance,
Mr. Bell. After our little chat yesterday, I felt so optimistic I just had to get out and get going. I went to the finest furnishing firm in Auckland, and I told the manager, I told him: ‘Look,’ I told him, ‘you’ve got the right stuff! It’s modern and it’s quality. Listen!’ I told him. ‘I’ll take this stuff, if you can get it to Wai-ata-tapu, Harpoon, by to-morrow afternoon. And if not, not.’ That’s the way I like to do things, Mr. Bell.”

  “I hope you have explained that even now Gaunt may not decide to come,” said Dikon. “You have all taken a great deal of trouble, Mrs. Claire.”

  Mrs. Claire looked doubtfully from Questing to Dikon. “I’m afraid,” she said plaintively, “that I don’t really quite appreciate very up-to-date furniture. I always think a homelike atmosphere, no matter how shabby… However.”

  Questing cut in, and Dikon only half-listened to another dissertation on the necessity of moving with the times. He was jerked into full awareness when Questing, with an air of familiarity, addressed himself to Barbara. “And what’s Babs got to say about it?” he asked, lowering his voice to a rich and offensive purr. Dikon saw her step backwards. It was an instinctive movement, he thought, uncontrollable as a reflex jerk, but less ungainly than her usual habit. Its effect on Dikon was as simple and as automatic as itself; he felt a stab of sympathy and a protective impulse. She was no longer regrettable; she was, for a moment, rather touching. Surprised, and a little disturbed, he looked away from Barbara to Mrs. Claire, and saw that her plump hands were clenched among sharp folds of the shining chintz. He felt that a little scene of climax had been enacted. It was disturbed by the appearance of another figure. Limping steps sounded on the verandah, and the doorway was darkened. A stocky man, elderly but still red-headed and extremely handsome in an angry sort of way, stood glaring at Questing.

  “Oh, James,” Mrs. Claire murmured, “there you are, old man. You haven’t met Mr. Bell. My brother, Dr. Ackrington.”

  As they shook hands, Dikon saw that Barbara had moved close to her uncle.