Green Dolphin Street

by Elizabeth Goudge

  “I understand you perfectly, Marianne,” he said suavely. “The creditable reasons with which you support your actions always do equal justice both to the nobility of your nature and the adroitness of your mind. May I do anything for you in Wellington?”

  “Do anything for me in Wellington?” she gasped.

  It was Tai Haruru’s habit, if he had just paid her a compliment which might be suspected of a sting in the tail, to follow it by a change of subject so abrupt that it deflected her from examination of his previous remark.

  “Yes. I am riding to Wellington at once.”

  “Whatever for? You said nothing of it last night.”

  “The necessity for the expedition has only become apparent to me during the course of the morning. Won’t you change your mind, and bring Véronique, and come with me?”

  “No, Mr. Haslam, I will not. And I see no need whatever for your dashing off to Wellington in this way. You are needed here to see to the erecting of the stockade.”

  “I agree with William as to the foolishness of that stockade; but if you insist upon it, he is perfectly able to attend to the matter without my assistance. Good-by.”

  He was gone, and a moment later she heard the pounding of his horse’s feet as he cantered over the wooden bridge which spanned the creek. She felt a little sinking of the heart when the sound ceased. . . . She would not feel so secure without him, for he was so beloved by the Maoris, so good at reasoning with them if there was any trouble. . . . And she feared for his safety upon the journey. . . . She decided to choose the second of these reasons to account for that momentary sinking of the heart, for it buttressed her conviction that Véronique must not be taken to Wellington. Having done so, she banished misgivings and set about her housework with vigor and determination. She had only just got her home into apple-pie order again; for the second time; first the earthquake, then the civil war. But her spirit was not even bruised, let alone broken. She hummed a little tune as she worked, and, glancing out of the window, noticed with satisfaction that William and his men were already working at the stockade.

  Chapter II

  1

  This time, with Marianne and Véronique to protect, no one could have accused William of indolence. He and his men worked like slaves, and a couple of days later, when he and Marianne went to bed, they had the satisfaction of knowing that tomorrow the stockade would be finished. Just one more day’s work and their house and garden would be entirely protected by a strong wooden wall made native fashion of stout stakes lashed with a tough, ropelike plant called toro-toro. The lumbermen were all camping out tonight in the garden within the almost completed stockade, and they had a good stock of food and arms. William’s doubts about the wisdom of the stockade had been quieted by Marianne’s arguments, but not quite killed. He had been disturbed by the abrupt disappearance of Hine-Moa, Jacky-Poto and Kapua-Manga, who had apparently vanished into thin air with the erection of the first stake. Marianne was not worried about this at all. She had heard reports of an epidemic of illness in the Maori village in the forest. “Hine-Moa would not wish infection to be brought to Véronique,” she said.

  “The men have worked damn well,” said William from his side of the fourposter. “By this time tomorrow the place will look a good stout pa from the outside. There should be two more rings of inner fencing, and ditches such as the Maoris have. We’ll get those done next, as quickly as possible.”

  Marianne moved her nightcapped head a little restlessly on the pillow to get her curl papers as comfortable as might be. “Just the outward appearance of strength will be sufficient to ward off unpleasantness,” she said. “But certainly we’ll have the inner fences and ditches too. Mr. Haslam should have stayed to help. He’s afraid, I think. I see no reason except cowardice for dashing off on this mysterious expedition to Wellington.”

  “Tai Haruru a coward?” ejaculated William, raising his head abruptly from the pillow, his face crimsoned with rage below a nightcap comically askew. “A coward? Tai Haruru?” He gobbled for a moment like a turkey cock, then laid his head quietly on the pillow again and fought down his anger. Ten minutes later, just when Marianne was dozing off, he said in level tones, “He rode off alone to Wellington. You, if you remember, decided that the journey was too dangerous for you to attempt even with protection.”

  “Don’t answer me back, William,” snapped Marianne.

  Her husband turned over on his side and hunched his shoulder at her. He was soon snoring, but Marianne lay awake staring into the darkness. She knew perfectly well, really, that Tai Haruru was no coward, but that she might be justified of her remark in her own eyes she must now be awake for perhaps hours, thinking up all the occasions in the past when actions or words of Tai Haruru’s might be construed as indications of fear. It was annoying, when she longed for sleep.

  But as it happened, her wakefulness was to some purpose, for it was she who in the first grey of dawn was suddenly aware of danger. She had been lying on her back, busy turning Tai Haruru’s hatred of all forms of violence into cowardice, when all of a sudden she found herself sitting bolt upright, listening intently. She did not know what it was that she had heard, but Captain O’Hara’s advice, given long ago on the Green Dolphin, came back to her. “Never lay an’ listen when a twig snaps in the forest—ye should be up an’ doin’ with your musket ready,” and in a moment she was out of bed and had awakened William.

  “Eh?” grunted William.

  “Quick, quick. William! There’s something not quite right outside. I heard something.”

  In a moment William too was out of bed and dragging on his clothes. Then he seized his gun and went to awaken Nat, while Marianne hastily dressed, quickly but carefully, with full attention to detail. She had just fastened her earrings in her ears when a horrible, raucous moaning sound seemed to tear the grey veil of the dawn into shreds. Her heart missed a beat, for it was the tetere, the Maori war trumpet, and hard upon its clamor came a hateful din; men shouting, dogs barking, and the rattle of musket fire. She ran into the next room and found Véronique sitting bolt upright in bed, wide-eyed. “It’s nothing, darling,” she said. “Only the Maoris making a silly noise to frighten us. We won’t be frightened. Get up and put your clothes on, and keep away from the window.”

  “We won’t be frightened,” repeated Véronique steadily, thrusting her pink feet out of bed and feeling beneath her pillow for her box of shells. “Captain O’Hara wasn’t frightened when we were wrecked on that whale.”

  “No, of course not,” said Marianne, unaware of what on earth the child was talking about. “It’s just a noise.”

  And then she ran out to the verandah. Here, by dint of climbing on a chair at the top of the steps, she could just see over the fencing in front of the house, and in the struggling light of the dawn she could see more Maoris than she had even seen before in one place. The whole male population of the village in the forest must be here, with many more besides. They were milling about uncertainly outside the stockade, making all the noise they could and occasionally firing their muskets into the air.

  “Get down, Marianne!” William shouted at her angrily. “Get down, I tell you!”

  He and Nat and his lumbermen, their guns in their hands, were standing ready for any eventuality. When the full light came, it might be apparent from outside that there was only one ring of fencing, and that with a weak spot in it, and no ditches yet.

  But Marianne stayed where she was, her heart beating now not with fear but with excitement. Her whole being was almost exploding with excitement, just as it used to do sometimes when she was a child and some thought of adventure lit up suddenly like a flame in her mind. She felt as light as air and as mad as a hatter. This wasn’t only the thought of adventure, it was adventure, and adventure decked with a strange, wild beauty. It was dawn now, with the flames of the hidden sun licking up behind the mountains and the sky a glorious gradation of pulsing
light. The forests were still drowned in night, and the mist was milk white in the valleys, but the great hills, rising above, had a reflected light upon them that turned their flanks to lacquered gold. The Maoris had feathers in their heads and wore their red war belts, and the morning gleamed on their tomahawks and muskets and fine bronze polished limbs. During the brief moment that she watched, the sun lifted above the mountains and the whole scene suddenly blazed up into a fierce unearthly brilliance that seemed to turn the blood in her veins to fire and set her pulses throbbing like drums in her body. She was laughing aloud, she found, and she only laughed the louder when a bullet pinged into the woodwork beside her.

  But William leaped up the verandah steps snarling like a wild beast, lifted her down, pushed her into the parlor, and slammed the door on her. Then from the top of the steps he cried out to the Maoris in their own language. Was he not Maui-Potiki, their friend, he asked? In his youth he had lived among them in the forest, and he had never lifted his hand against them. Why, then, must the peace of himself and his wife and child be thus disturbed? They desired only to dwell in peace among their Maori friends. They wished them nothing but good.

  But William had been infuriated by the pinging bullet so near to Marianne, and his peaceable words did not issue in a very peaceable tone. Perhaps the Maoris did not hear what he said and were aware only of his angry shouting and the scarlet fury of his face, or perhaps that sudden blazing up of light and color had whipped their blood to madness, as it had Marianne’s. In any case their mood abruptly changed from uncertainty to the red-hot lust for destruction. A shower of bullets came over the stockade, and the battering of their clubs against the wood was like the roaring of thunder.

  Although until the end of her days Marianne shuddered dramatically when recounting the history of the next half hour, she nevertheless enjoyed it enormously. Picking herself up from the floor, where William’s vigorous push had landed her, she ran to Véronique’s room to tell her to stay where she was and not to be afraid, and then ran back again to William and Nat and the men in the garden. “Keep indoors!” William shouted at her. “No!” she answered, and seized a gun and cartridge box and stood beside him and Nat. She knew how to handle a gun. At her request William had taught her when she first came to New Zealand.

  “Six men here, where the stakes are not lashed,” commanded William. “The rest of you spread out round the garden and watch the stockade. Shoot on sight if any Maori attempts to scale it.”

  There were not enough of them, of course. Their numbers would have been adequate against the small raiding parties that had come against them last time, but with their defenses incomplete they were not adequate for the bronzed army that now entirely surrounded them. With six men concentrated at the weak spot, it was quite impossible to watch every part of the single stockade. Marianne knew this, but she was not yet dismayed.

  “Not here, Marianne,” said William, who with Nat had constituted himself one of the six who guarded the weak stretch of fencing. “If they break through badly, it will be here. If you must play the fool with that gun, my dear, get away from here.”

  “Go, Ma’am,” said Nat gently, his one eye fixed pleadingly upon her “There is the child.”

  She withdrew a little and crouched down with her gun among the bushes beneath Véronique’s bedroom window, with William’s broad back well within her sight. His rough tones had thrilled, not angered her. She had heard the comradely admiration in them; a sense of togetherness.

  “Who is it?” queried Véronique from inside the room, and there was an edge of terror to her voice.

  “It’s Mamma,” said Marianne. “Stay where you are, darling. Don’t come to the window. You’re quite safe with Mamma.”

  Véronique gave a little sigh of relief and satisfaction, and that, too, thrilled Marianne.

  The babel of noise continued, but from where she crouched she could see nothing above the high stockade. Now and then there would be a gleam of bright feathers as a Maori leaped into the air to get a view of the garden, but the gleam was immediately followed by the flight of a white man’s bullet, and after a few moments they leaped no more. They were discouraged, Marianne guessed triumphantly. Those who had leaped had not been left alive to disclose how few white men were within the enclosure, and that there was only one fence and no ditches. They were quieter now. They were discouraged, and soon they would go away. She knew very little, really, of the Maoris, and she saw nothing ominous in the silence.

  The horror burst like a thunderstorm or an earthquake, like any of the upheavals that were forever devastating this appalling country. One moment there was quiet, and the next there was a roar as of a breaking dam. She saw the weak strip of the stockade give way before the determined onslaught of shouting men, while all round the enclosure other Maoris, steadied on the shoulders of their fellows, came leaping over the one fence and down into the garden. Marianne did not look at that handful of white men stemming the onslaught in the breach, she steadied her musket and fired at the men leaping the fence. She took aim carefully and fired again and again. She scarcely even thought of William now. Every thought, every nerve in her body, was concentrated upon the child in the room behind her. When a leaping bronzed figure toppled and fell, she felt no sense of horror at what she had done, only exhilaration because of Véronique.

  Her round of ammunition was finished now and the Maoris were on top of her, coming down upon her like a tidal wave that had already swept away the white men strung out round the stockade. The stench of their bodies choked her, and she was deafened by their shouting. She stood up straight before the window, her arms stretched wide to shield Véronique, and waited for their spears in her breast.

  But there was no sharp pain, only a hand that grasped the bodice of her dress and dragged her roughly away from the window. And at the same moment that the hand touched her she felt Véronique scramble up on the window sill and wind her arms round her neck from behind. She staggered a few paces and opened her eyes. She was standing in the middle of a crowd of Maoris with her child on her back. Of course, she thought, all the ghastly stories of Maori atrocities that she had ever heard flooding through her mind. Of course. They would not kill at once. They would not kill until they wanted meat. She had a little time yet, and the more time there is, the more room for hope.

  And meanwhile they were more curious than unfriendly. They were wild Maoris from deep within the forest whom she had not seen before, and from their astonished exclamations she guessed that they had never yet seen a white woman or child. They dragged the cameo brooch out of her dress and snatched at the chateleine that hung from her waistband. They were not interested in her greenstone earrings, for these were such as their own women wore. They touched Véronique’s flaxen curls with astonished fingers, those in the background thrusting forward for a better view, and those near to the white lady and her child refusing to give ground until they had thoroughly examined the phenomenon in their midst. Marianne’s black eyes, gazing into theirs, never wavered, and though Véronique was trembling all over, she did not cry. She was holding her box of shells hidden in a fold of her dress, and they did not take it away from her. Neither of them could see anything beyond the wall of tall figures that surrounded them, and they had lost all sense of time. It might have been hours that they stayed like this, with the alien fingers plucking at them, or it might have been minutes, and then the bronzed bodies about them were caught up into sudden movement, as forest trees when the wind blows, and they were being carried away over the ruins of the garden they knew not in what direction. Véronique had scrambled down from Marianne’s back now and was stumbling along beside her, holding her hand. Presently they halted again, and Marianne knew why they had moved. For acrid smoke was blowing over them and it was very hot. Her home was on fire. She could hear the crackle of the flames above the roar of triumphant shouting. Doubtless they had pillaged the house before they set it alight and now they were dividin
g the spoils.

  “Mamma, where is Papa?” asked Véronique. She was not too desperately frightened because she always felt safe when her mother was with her, but she was terribly anxious about the other people whom she loved, and longed, as always, to have them all with her. “And Nat?” she went on. “And Old Nick and Uncle Haruru?”

  “Uncle Haruru is safely in Wellington,” said Marianne with bitterness, “and Papa and Nat will be here very soon.”

  And then, every vestige of her brief, mad enjoyment gone, anguish swept over her. For where was William? And where was Nat? When she had seen them last, they had been two of that little party of six withstanding the onslaught of an army in the breach, and it did not seem possible that they could be still alive. She seemed to herself to stand there drowned in anguish for hours and hours.

  Then they were moving again, and presently the fronds of great ferns showed above the shoulders of the Maoris, and over their heads was the grateful green of mighty trees. The scent and sound of the burning was dying away, and they were in the forest.

  A hand gripped her arm, and Marianne looked up and found Kapua-Manga striding beside her, his eyes upon the ground.

  “Kapua-Manga,” she cried to him reproachfully, “you have been false to Maui-Potiki.”

  “Maui-Potiki was false to his friend Kapua-Manga,” said the Maori defensively. “Why did he erect that fence against his friend Kapua-Manga, and his friends Jacky-Poto and Hine-Moa? He erected a fence against his friends.”

  So they had resented the stockade. William had not wanted it, but she had insisted. Her grief and self-loathing were so intense that they affected her body like a physical illness. Her head began to swim, and she stumbled so much that she would not have been able to go on walking had it not been for Kapua-Manga’s hold upon her arm. “Does Maui-Potiki still live?” she asked him over and over again. But he gave her no answer. He was bitterly angry and resentful, and he was not going to speak to her again.