Green Dolphin Street

by Elizabeth Goudge

  “But why have they saved us four alive?” asked Marianne.

  “I couldn’t say, girl,” said William slowly. “Maybe Jacky-Poto and Kapua-Manga insisted on that. You can tell they’re doing all they can for us.”

  “If they have saved our lives merely from kindness, why bring us here?” asked Marianne. “It would have saved trouble to leave us alive in the ruins of the settlement. Hine-Moa had been weeping, William. Don’t you think it possible we’ve been brought here to give the village the pleasure of seeing us tortured?”

  “It’s possible,” admitted William heavily. “There’s a new form of religion growing up among the Maoris, Tai Haruru was telling me. They’ve picked out the worst elements in the beliefs of the various white men they’ve come across and added it to the worst elements in their own. He described their goings-on at present as an unpleasant mixture of jadaism, Mormonism, mesmerism, spiritualism, and cannibalism. Things are being done that are not at all in keeping with the Maori character. Seems as though once men have started killing each other, the devil breaks loose. I don’t blame old Tai Haruru that he never kills if he can help it.”

  Marianne raised her eyes from the linked hands of herself and her husband and looked up at all she could see of the outer world above this round chimney of wooden walls; the feathery tufts of motionless trees, the deep blue sky, the peerless snow of the mountain peak with a wisp of white cloud trailing from its summit like a feather. The only sounds to be heard were peaceful village sounds, the voices of children, the distant bark of a dog, the rasp of a saw on wood. The violence of three days ago seemed like a bad dream, and it was difficult to think of it coming alive again in this peace and beauty. It was still harder to imagine one’s self being tortured. Torture was the sort of thing that happened to other people, to early Christian martyrs and people of that sort, but not to one’s self and one’s relations. Yet why shouldn’t it happen to one’s self and one’s own? Out of what congenital arrogance had sprung this sense of immunity? This “to them, not to me and mine” way of thinking, that she had hitherto taken as quite natural, was a shocking and dreadful revelation of human callousness. Pride and selfishness, they were the same, really. If torture could root them out of her, then let her be tortured.

  But not William, not Véronique. She turned to William, suddenly breathless as though there were no air to breathe. The worst thing about sin was that its punishment could not be borne by the sinner alone. Why did one not realize that before it was too late?

  “There, there, my girl,” said William soothingly. “I spoke too openly. Clumsy ass. You were happy a moment, ago, and now I have you all of a twitter.”

  “I’m still happy,” said Marianne. “One can be happy and miserable both at once, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know,” said William. “Sounds silly to me. We’ve been looking on the black side, girl. Doesn’t do to dwell on that. There’s always a silver lining. In our case, two. Kapua-Manga and Jacky-Poto, now, I can’t think they’ll fail us altogether. I remember Tai Haruru saying to me as a young lad, ‘They’ll be your friends if you always speak courteously, always keep your word, and never show fear before them.’ Well, we’ve lived up to that, you and I, and we won’t fail now. And then there’s old Tai Haruru himself. What’s he up to at this moment?”

  “Yes, what?” asked Marianne tartly. “Is it a silver lining that he left us in danger and went off to Wellington on his own selfish concerns?”

  “He didn’t do that, my dear. He went to Wellington to fetch a detachment of redcoats to conduct you and Véronique there in safety. You wouldn’t go, you remember, because of the danger of the journey for Véronique.”

  “Oh, why was he so weak?” demanded Marianne. “He knew I was just making excuses. He should have taken Véronique and me with him by main force.”

  “Well, he doesn’t like scenes, and you’d have made a scene, Marianne, you know you would. And he thought we had plenty of time. He didn’t expect the tribes hereabouts to turn unfriendly. What he expected was a migration of unfriendly Maoris from farther north.”

  “Oh, what a headstrong fool I was!” lamented Marianne.

  “Don’t think of that, girl. Just think that Tai Haruru will be turning up at the settlement with his redcoats, and when he finds us gone, he won’t be the man I think him if he doesn’t come on in pursuit.”

  Marianne smiled. It was her private opinion that for the Red Garment to attack the pa would be immediately to seal the fate of the prisoners inside it. Nor could she imagine Tai Haruru leading English soldiers to slaughter his beloved Maoris. And in any case, how long would it take him to find the pa? She did not see what he could do to help them. But she did not speak of her doubts to William, who was resting upon the thought of Tai Haruru as a young child upon the thought of its father’s strength. She too rested, leaning against William’s shoulder. The sun was hot now, and its eager blaze had dispersed the feathery cloud that had clung to the mountaintop, leaving its beautiful outline clear-cut against the blue. That ever-changing yet ever-constant mountain was an unspeakable solace. Life is so brittle, so soon broken, she thought, that our thoughts must find some sort of permanence to cling to. A child’s thoughts to its father, William’s to his friend, mine to the mountain. It’s queer; I’ve never needed to cling before. I don’t think that I’ve ever before felt that I needed God.

  3

  Véronique was happy. She and Nat were sitting together in the sun, and Nat was carving a bit of wood into a toy for her with his jackknife. She still had her precious box of shells, but it was nice to have other things to play with, too, and Nat’s toys comforted her for the fact that the kettle holder she had been making for Mamma had been left behind at home, mermaid, bleeding heart, and all. Nat could not carve so well as Uncle Haruru. One could not tell what kind of birds his carved birds were meant to be, but one could tell that they were birds, and not monkeys or elephants, and that was something; more than enough, in fact, to please Véronique. She liked having Nat entirely at her disposal like this. His leg was better, but not quite well yet, and he could not pace up and down and talk as Mamma and Papa did, he had to sit still with her and make her toys and tell her stories. His stories were not the equal of Papa’s, of course, but she found them very enthralling all the same.

  “You’ve had a lovely life, Nat,” said Véronique, Nat having just recounted for the eleventh time the story of his first meeting with the amazing and wonderful Captain O’Hara.

  “Ay,” agreed Nat wholeheartedly, whittling away at the wooden bird he was making for her.

  “I like it in this funny place, don’t you?” she continued, looking up at the great clouds overhead that were like sailing ships drifting on a calm ocean.

  But suddenly, most unexpectedly, Véronique began to weep. Nat gazed at her, horror-struck, then, looking down at the bit of wood in his hands, realized what he had done. His ignorance of ornithology was abysmal, and he had not made any attempt at portraiture in the bird he was carving for her, yet quite without intention on his part it had come out with a parroty head, and parrots were a subject that had to be avoided just now with Véronique. No one knew what had happened to Old Nick when the settlement had been attacked, and the little girl wept upon every remembrance of him, by no means comforted by the assurance of the grownups that he’d be bound to turn up soon. Their assurances lacked conviction, and she knew it.

  “Old Nick!” she sobbed now. “Poor Old Nick! You’re here, and Papa and Mamma are here, and Uncle Haruru is safe in Wellington, but where’s Old Nick?”

  Nat began to make rumbling noises of exquisite tenderness, but doubtful meaning, deep in his throat. Then he touched the little girl gently with his forefinger and bared his tattooed chest for her inspection. Nat’s tattooing was a source of comfort that had never been known to fail, and Véronique’s sobs stopped instantly.

  Marianne got up and stole away. She felt suddenly
that it was not seemly that she should be present while Véronique sought comfort for a bereavement over which her mother was less grief-stricken than she was. There would be no use in Marianne’s pretending to herself that she was missing Old Nick, because she was not.

  Whatever was that? Something had hit the ground with a soft thud just a couple of feet in front of her. It was a Maori arrow. Some wretched Maori was evidently going to amuse himself by shooting arrows into the pa. This one might have hit Véronique. She picked it up in a rage, then paused, her rage turned to wonder. “William!” she cried. “William, come here!”

  He came to her and took the arrow, turning it slowly over and over in his hands. Its tip had been carefully blunted, there was faint delicate ornamentation on the shaft, and its feathers were unusually gay, bright green, buff, and rose color.

  “Nat!” called the mystified William.

  Nat came, Véronique holding to his hand.

  “Did you ever see an arrow like that?” William demanded of him.

  “Prettiest arrow I ever seen,” Nat averred.

  But it was Véronique who knew at once what it was about this arrow that was different from other arrows. “Its feathers are like Old Nick’s,” she cried. “Oh, Papa, Papa, Old Nick’s dead! That arrow has been made out of Old Nick!” And she once more dissolved into tears of inconsolable grief.

  William picked her up to comfort her, and Nat shook his head sadly, but Marianne snatched the arrow and looked at it again. It was most exquisitely fashioned. Excellent craftsmen though the Maoris were, she was sure they had never made an arrow as beautiful as this. And the artist had signed his work. The carved pattern along the shaft began and ended with the two letters, T.H.

  Marianne felt as though a tight band that for days and nights had constricted her chest had been loosened, and as though a leaden weight had been lifted off the top of her head. She let out a great sigh. “My dears,” she said, “I believe that we are delivered.”

  Chapter III

  1

  Véronique sobbed herself to sleep that night, but the grownups, though they had to dissemble their joy before her, were happy, and when they had lain down slept, instantly and deeply. True, Tai Haruru was merely a human man, with no miraculous powers to save and defend, yet the fact that he was apparently near to them gave them a sense of wonderful security. His mana was indeed high with them; perhaps until this night they had not realized just how high. “One can rely on him,” Marianne said to her husband before she slept. And in her dreams she saw that constant mountaintop above the pa, and a tall figure standing upon its summit fitting a feathered arrow of deliverance into a bow. The figure was that of Tai Haruru, yet when she looked more closely the face became suddenly the face of Marguerite. And then, with another of those queer changes that come in dreams, the mountain was the rock of Marie-Tape-Tout. She could hear the breaking of the waves on the rocks and the raging of the wind around it; and awoke suddenly in a darkness lit by flame to find the raging tumult actually with her in this hut on the other side of the world. “That sea of green fern has crashed down on us,” was the thought in her sleep-confused mind. “I knew it would. Véronique? Véronique?”

  Her child’s hand touched hers, and immediately she was sitting up and fully conscious. Nat had come creeping into the hut and was shaking William awake.

  “What’s the matter?” mumbled William indignantly.

  Nat croaked out some unintelligible remarks, but it was Marianne who gave her husband precise information. “The whole village seems to be coming inside the pa, William,” she said calmly. “They must think themselves in danger. Hand me my corsets.”

  As they had no nightwear they had to sleep in their torn and crumpled clothes, but Marianne always removed her gown and corsets before she slept, for to sleep in Victorian corsets was simply not possible. William looked at his watch in the torchlight that shone through the low door of the hut. Midnight. . . . He put on his coat and went outside with Nat while Marianne laced up her corsets with precision, hooked up her own gown and Véronique’s with care, and stowed her hair tidily away inside its net. This gathering of one’s back hair inside a large net, the new style of hairdressing that William and Tai Haruru had failed to notice on the last peaceful evening at the settlement, was excellently adapted for civil war in the primeval forest, she thought, though possibly the Parisian hairdresser who had devised the fashion had been unaware of the fact. She blessed him, all the same. It would be nice to die tidy. For it looked, now, as though they would have to die. If the Red Garment was attacking, the first thing the Maoris would do would be to slaughter their white prisoners who had brought the attack upon them. If Tai Haruru had instigated the attack, he was not being very subtle, and her last night’s faith in him had been mistaken. But had he? Was it like him to bring death upon his Maoris? Her eye fell upon the green feathered arrow, lying on the floor of the hut, and she found that though appearances were against him, yet his mana was still high with her. If ingenuity could save them, they would be saved. Telling Véronique to stay where she was, she joined William and Nat at the entrance to the hut.

  In the mingled light of moon and flaming torches the whole village was surging into the pa, warriors in full war panoply, old men and women, children and dogs. The din was indescribable, war drums tapping, teteres braying, men shouting, children yelling and dogs barking. But in spite of the noise and confusion there was no sign of fear, for the gathering of the tribe within the pa in time of danger was an agelong ritual, and the Maoris were always brave in battle, whatever the odds against them. And gradually the confusion sorted itself out into ordered activity, the able-bodied women running backward and forward bringing in fuel, provisions, and household possessions from the village below, the children and old people building fires of brushwood to increase the light, the warriors working like furies cleaning muskets, strengthening the fences, clearing out the ditches, and hacking down the ruins of the old village that impeded movement within the pa. Now and then a few of them cast glances of hatred at their white prisoners, but it seemed they were too busy to deal with them just at present. As yet there was no sound of firing from outside. Evidently their scouts had told them well in advance of the approach of the enemy.

  Presently the ebb and flow of movement steadied a little as the women and children settled down in family groups with their cooking pots and household goods. But the men worked on, the savage light of the flames gleaming on their fine naked bodies, tattooed from knee to waist, their red war belts, and the feathers in their heads. Cartridge boxes were fastened to their belts, and short-handled tomahawks were thrust into them in the small of the back, for close fighting and to finish the wounded. Each man had his musket, and now and then there was an explosion of angry sound as they experimented with them to see if they would go off. Once Marianne thought she caught a glimpse of Kapua-Manga and Jacky-Poto, but in the strange, fitful light it was difficult to be certain. She saw no sight of Hine-Moa.

  Véronique began to cry a little, and Nat crept to the back of the hut to comfort her, but Marianne stayed with William crouching in the entrance. He pushed her behind his broad back, but over his shoulder she managed to see all she wanted, and so thrilling was the scene that she was seized by the same mad excitement that had gripped her when she had seen the Maoris surging round the settlement in that dawn that now seemed years ago. But this scene was stranger and more wild, with the leaping flames of the bonfires, the torches, the darkness, and the snow-covered, moonlit mountain peak overhead rising tranquil and coldly quiet far away above the noise and tumult.

  Suddenly William caught his breath. “Look at that tua sitting on the stone to the left,” he whispered to Marianne. “Take a good look at him and then look away.” And then he himself looked to the right that they might not both be seen gazing at the same man.

  At first sight Marianne could see nothing outstanding about the warrior seated on the stone cleani
ng his musket. He was not a young man. His brown body was long and lean, his hawklike features fine-drawn and clear-cut against the glow of the fire behind him. He gave the impression of having been shaped from some tough old kauri tree, an effect increased by a tattooing of limbs and face as elaborate and precise as fine carving upon wood. Utterly detached from the noise all about him, he was so absorbed in his task that his serenity spread even to Marianne, stilling her madness and quieting her hammering pulses. Then the fire behind him sent up a bright tongue of flame, and she saw that he had green feathers stuck in his grizzled hair, and again her heart was beating and her pulses throbbing, and like William she looked away.

  They drew back into the shadows of the hut and held lightly to each other.

  “Is it—is it—” she whispered.

  “Yes,” said William.

  “But the tattooing,” she said.

  “He was always tattooed like that from waist to knee. Had it done years ago to please the Maoris. But the tattooing on the face is new. It would be a perfect disguise if we did not know him so well.”

  They allowed themselves another brief glance. He was strolling toward them, and what he had been sitting upon was not a stone but a bundle that he now carried fastened to his belt behind in place of a cartridge box. By a very circuitous route he reached them and passed them without a glance, a knife falling from his belt. Marianne covered it with a fold of her gown, and presently William took it and put it in his own belt. It was his own knife, that Captain O’Hara had given him long ago, and that Kapua-Manga had taken from him.