Green Dolphin Street

by Elizabeth Goudge

  “Be silent!” said Tai Haruru, and seizing the tohunga by the shoulders, he summarily put him forth. Then, taking the blanket that covered young Tiki, he hung it over the door. “Now,” he said angrily to Samuel, “do exactly as I tell you, and you also be silent. It is you chattering priests who kill all the patients and drive the doctors mad.”

  Samuel, whom ignorance of the language had kept entirely silent throughout the proceedings, swallowed this insult to the priesthood in a further silence, rolled up his sleeves, and stiffened his nerves for the coming ordeal.

  He was sensitive and fastidious, possessed of an instinctive repulsion from the ills of the body, and he found it a greater ordeal even than he had expected. His knees seemed to turn to water as Tai Haruru’s knife incised the boy’s poisoned flesh, and the oozing out of the evil-smelling viscous fluid sickened him nearly to nausea. Yet he held the limb steady for Tai Haruru and handed him what he needed without faltering. When the operation was over and the limb bandaged, the two men smiled at each other. “Well done, little parson,” said Tai Haruru. “Now, if you like, you may pray.”

  Samuel straightened himself and looked at the almost lifeless figure on the bed. The sunset light was pouring down upon it through the hole in the roof like liquid gold.

  “What was the meaning of the tohunga’s last adjuration?” he asked irrelevantly, scarcely aware of what he said.

  “They were the Maori words of dismissal to the departing soul,” said Tai Haruru. “ ‘Now, now, be one with the wide light, the Sun! With night and darkness, O be one, be one!’ The old scoundrel! If the boy had heard those words, he would have died instantly of the power of suggestion.”

  He seemed confident, but to Samuel the figure lying on the bed in the pool of brilliant light seemed now scarcely more than a wraith. It was as though the sun were slowly absorbing the boy’s being into itself, and leaving only the mortal shadow of its immortality lying on the bed. Samuel fell on his knees and prayed. It meant so much that young Tiki should recover. It meant not only the life of himself and Tai Haruru, which was a small matter, but the salvation of the whole village. . . . Or so Samuel believed. . . . He prayed with a great intensity, only vaguely aware of Tai Haruru moving deftly about his doctor’s business, coaxing soup between the boy’s lips, wrapping him warmly in blankets, placing stones heated at the fire and wrapped in rag against his feet. He was hardly aware either of the fading of the sunshine and the coming of the night, and only came to himself when Tai Haruru shook him roughly by the shoulder and put a bowl of hot soup into his hands.

  “Wet your whistle with that,” said the older man kindly. “You must be ravenous after so much entreating of Almighty God. And the battle has only just begun.”

  He turned away and lit the lantern, then sat down by the bed and took the boy’s hands between his own, speaking to him softly in his own language. Tiki was stirring and muttering occasionally now, and Samuel had the feeling that he was trying to go free, pulling against the hands that kept him. Sometimes Tai Haruru took the boy’s body between his hands, sometimes he gently laid them on the head and breast. He had spoken with contempt of the tohunga, but it occurred to Samuel that though his skill with the knife had been equal to that of any trained surgeon, his present manner of healing was more analogous to tohunga methods than to those of modern science. What was this power that he had in his hands? It struck Samuel as being all of a piece with that primeval, earthy quality of the man, and yet at the same time to be a power that was of God.

  3

  “Sunrise and all’s well,” said Tai Haruru, once more administering a shaking, and Samuel came to himself from the stupor of exhaustion into which he had fallen, to find the sunlight shining through the roof again and Tiki sleeping as peacefully and healthfully as a child.

  “Have I slept?” he asked. He had only the vaguest remembrance as to how he had lost consciousness last night, but he found himself now stretched out comfortably upon one rug and covered with another, and he scrambled to his feet with horror at his own laxity.

  “Why not?” asked Tai Haruru laughing. “You permitted yourself to be put to sleep as obediently as Tiki himself.”

  “And you yourself have not closed your eyes the whole night,” cried Samuel in self-reproach.

  “I’m no townsman,” said Tai Haruru contemptuously, “accustomed to sleep and eat and pray and work at certain hours, and all at sixes and sevens when my routine’s broken. I eat and sleep when it is convenient, as the animals do.”

  “All’s well with the child?” asked Samuel, remembering the words that had awoken him.

  “All’s well, with careful nursing,” said Tai Haruru.

  A shadow darkened the sunlight in the doorway. It was the chief, Hongi, with the tohunga beside him and the villagers behind at a respectful distance.

  “Enter Hongi only,” said Tai Haruru.

  Hongi entered and stood at the foot of the bed looking at the bandaged arm from which undoubtedly a devil had departed, for it was of a normal shape again, and at the boy’s face from which the shadow of death had lifted. Then he strode out of the hut and cried to the assembled villagers that these pakehas were good pakehas, each was a tino tangata, a right good man, and should be treated accordingly.

  Only the tohunga, though he bowed to the pakehas and congratulated them volubly upon the success of their night’s work, was without friendliness. Their mana was now high and his correspondingly weakened, and what does it profit a tohunga if he gain the whole world, if that mysterious and precious thing, his mana, is departed from him? Without it he is no tohunga, for he is without reverence, honor, or authority. His eyes were blazing with hatred as he turned away after his courteous speech, and Samuel shivered.

  When he had told the good news, Hongi returned to the hut again and sat down cross-legged to feast his eyes upon the healthful sleep of his son. What could he do, he asked, to reward the pakehas?

  “Where are Kapua-Manga, Jacky-Poto, and Hine-Moa?” demanded Tai Haruru.

  Hongi looked vague, and Tai Haruru repeated the question.

  Hongi said he had never heard of them.

  “If you think that they gave any assistance to the Red Garment, you misjudge them,” said Tai Haruru. “Their loyalty to their tribe was unblemished. I, Tai Haruru, am a magician who knows the hearts of men, and I know that this is true.”

  Hongi asked to be told who these loyal ones were, that honor might be done them.

  “Your son Tiki is by no means recovered from his sickness,” said Tai Haruru. “If he does not receive very careful nursing he may yet die. The woman Hine-Moa has much skill in nursing. If she is not here within the next ten minutes to assist me in my labors, I and my friend the white tohunga will leave the village and Tiki will die.”

  Hongi arose with slow, graceful dignity and said he would inquire among his people if there were any woman of this name within the village.

  Five minutes later Hine-Moa stood in the doorway, a dish of steaming sweet potatoes in her hands. She was smiling, but tremulously, and her wrists had been chafed raw by the rope that had bound them until a moment ago. But a quick glance showed Tai Haruru that her breast had not been cut by the flints. She was not a widow.

  “Kapua-Manga lives,” he said with satisfaction. “Is he also now unbound?”

  Hine-Moa nodded. “He is wounded but alive,” she said. “Jacky-Poto was killed by the big gun. But what is that to me? He was not my husband. Now that we are freed, when Kapua-Manga is well again we will go back to our own village. We do not like it here. The potatoes are good. Eat them. The sun is warm and light, a blessing to the eyes, but there are many who will go down into darkness unless you aid them. Eat and come quickly.”

  Chapter III

  1

  Samuel was a man unaccustomed either to sparing himself or being spared, yet never had he lived at such full stretch as during the next few weeks.<
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  He and Tai Haruru threw two huts into one and turned them into a hospital for the wounded. They sent the few able-bodied men left into the forest to round up the scattered pigs, for the village was near to starvation but had hardly had the heart even to dig potatoes, and they set the women to cooking savory stews and washing bandages and making splints. A third hut became a crude operating theater where Tai Haruru reigned supreme, and a fourth a dispensary where Samuel dealt with minor ailments such as cuts and bruises and sore eyes. Kapua-Manga was soon healed of his wound, and he and Hine-Moa and their children went away to their own village. Tai Haruru was sorry to see them go, for not only was Hine-Moa a good nurse but they would have been staunch friends in adversity. Some of the wounded were in too desperate a case for even Tai Haruru’s skill to save them, but Tiki recovered, and the percentage of recoveries was so high that the mana of the white men remained high also.

  Tai Haruru, knowing this, worked untiringly, giving himself to the last ounce, but steadily and without distress, for his aim was merely the easing of pain as some reparation for the rocket gun that had been the cause of so much misery, and he had already done so much that, at whatever moment the crash came, he would feel that he had accomplished his object. But Samuel’s purpose was so immense that he felt the constriction of the time like an iron band about him, goading him nearly to frenzy. He had discovered that he knew even less of the Maori language than he had imagined. How in the world was he to learn enough of it to preach salvation to these people? The Maori language was an abominable language. Trying to get the Gospel of Christ within it was like trying to force a man’s foot into a child’s boot. He went nearly distracted trying to master the outlandish and inadequate words, while meanwhile his unused Bible seemed to him to be burning a hole in his pocket, so red-hot was it with the passion to be put to use.

  But something he could do, in the intervals of slaving in hospital and dispensary; he could build a Christian church. Near the tohunga’s house, flanked by its totems upon posts, with the head of the god Tumatauenga carved over the triangular lintel, was a deserted and half ruined hut. This he repaired as well as he could, setting a cross over the lintel. Inside he placed a wooden table with his Bible upon it, and he strewed the floor with fresh rushes. Twice a day, at sunrise and sunset, he knelt within his church in full view of the village, and prayed.

  The village, still under the spell of the white men’s skill and devotion, still needing their help, crowded round the door while he prayed and regarded his devotions with tolerant amusement. And when he rose from his knees and struggled to speak to them of his God, they listened with the utmost courtesy, scarcely understanding a word of the gibberish he was making of their language, but understanding their duty as hosts very well indeed. It was not they, Samuel knew, who under cover of darkness removed the cross. It was the tohunga. But he said nothing to the tohunga. He just made a second cross and set it up.

  Tai Haruru argued fiercely with Samuel. “Tumatauenga is the Father of Men. Is he not as good a god as your god?”

  “Tumatauenga is also the god of war,” retorted Samuel. “While my God is the Prince of Peace.”

  “Worshipped by the Red Garment and its rocket gun,” said Tai Haruru acidly. “Of the two, I think I prefer Tumatauenga. He at least seems to have less trouble in bringing round his worshippers to his own way of thinking, and I like efficiency in gods. Don’t fight the tohunga, Kelly. He’s dangerous.”

  “Error must be fought wherever it is perceived,” said Samuel sententiously. “Those children are in error when they worship their nature gods of wind and wood and water. These gods are merely the personification of their own longing to be one with the beauty of earth. They in their earthly bodies cannot pass into the grace of a kauri tree, or the majesty of wind or the splendor of the sea, but Tane-Mahuta can, Tawhiri-Matea can, and Tangaroa. When we rode through the forest together, I understood for the first time why men make these nature spirits, these sprites and elves. Yet I have to teach these children that their gods are only man-made. I have to teach them the real meaning of their hunger and thirst.”

  “Any success?” asked Tai Haruru drily.

  “Lack of even the likelihood of success in the performance of a divinely commanded task does not absolve a man from the duty of making the attempt,” said the little parson with dignity. “The attempt is what God demands of man, the success follows as and when he pleases, and seems to bear little relation to human notions of it. And why this argument? We had a bargain. I was to let you alone and you were to let me alone. I have not only let you alone, I have helped you, while you are interfering with me in the most unpardonable manner.”

  Tai Haruru laughed, for Samuel’s impressive pulpit manner always consorted most comically with his small physique. Then he was suddenly grave again. “I’m damned fond of you, Kelly,” he said soberly. “And damned nervous of the tohunga. Some of these tohungas are fine men, genuine seers and prophets, but others are devils. There’s a devilish side to the Maori religion, you know, Kelly. There always has been, and lately, under our influence, it’s got worse. Don’t forget that when the first—so-called—Maori Christians were given Bibles, they lapped up the blood and thunder of the Old Testament like a cat lapping cream, but they made the New Testament into cartridges to shoot the white men with. They’re like that—especially just lately.”

  “I know perfectly well,” said Samuel, “that the Maori religion has to a certain extent been polluted, not cleansed, by the white man. That’s partly why I’m here. We are both of us here that reparation may be made.”

  Tai Haruru shrugged and turned away.

  Samuel was not deceived when the tohunga suddenly turned friendly, asking that they might speak together, assisting him in his care of the sick, bringing him dishes of carefully prepared food, joining Samuel’s amused little congregation and listening to his halting sermons with kindly condescension. He could still sense the man’s hatred, his wickedness. He knew that this friendliness was merely an attempt on the part of the tohunga to win favor again with his own people, for the favor of his people was necessary if he was to destroy the white tohunga without bringing harm upon himself. He was genuinely and fanatically jealous for his gods, as jealous as was Samuel for his God, but at the same time he was determined to come to no harm himself. And he was expert in avoiding unpleasantness, as only those can be who live their whole lives among bloodthirsty and courageous people. In only one thing had Samuel the advantage of the other; in this fight that had been forced upon him he cared very little what might happen to himself; he did not care nothing, for there was Susanna, and there was the natural shrinking of his human flesh from danger and pain, but he cared very little.

  Yet he chose his weapons with care, mindful that upon the weapons used by his servants the king is judged. He set aside guile and caution and chose instead friendliness, courage, and a gentle patience foreign to his fiery nature, and that immense good will that he had seen in action when Tai Haruru had surmounted that first wave of hatred that had met them on arrival. . . . Only this hatred of the tohunga’s was much more subtle, much more difficult to counter, because it was running underground. His task was far more difficult than Tai Haruru’s had been.

  And so he invited the tohunga to halting conversations beneath the trees, teaching him English at his request—which he picked up far more quickly that Samuel picked up the Maori tongue—expounding to him the Christian religion, welcoming him in his little dispensary, and teaching him all that he knew about the white man’s methods of healing. Most especially, remembering the tohunga’s failure with Tiki, did he teach him about the cleansing of wounds and the avoiding of tetanus. And he ate of the tohunga’s oily dishes, hiding his fear of poison, and instead of spending his nights with Tai Haruru in his little hospital he insisted on sleeping alone and unarmed in a lean-to hut at the side of his miniature church. . . . During sleepless nights he thought of Samuel Marsden, who
on Christmas day had wrapped himself in his greatcoat and lain down to sleep among Maoris who had just massacred and devoured a whole ship’s crew of white men. And of Bishop Selwyn, perhaps at this very moment traveling unarmed through the bush. And of St. Paul enduring the stocks and the stoning and the beating. . . . Missionaries, he told himself, are always in good company.

  2

  He awoke suddenly one morning to find the tohunga bending over him. Was this the end, he wondered? He lay still, steeling himself against the descent of the knife. But no, the tohunga was merely awaking him with the news that some inexperienced young tuas had been out after wild boar and two of them had been gored, and Tai Haruru required assistance at the hospital.

  “We will go together,” said Samuel.

  He had slept late, and he stepped out of his little hut into the fresh loveliness of a most brilliant morning. The snow-covered mountain peak, that from the first moment that he had set eyes upon it had symbolized for him some watchful and prayerful presence, was so dazzlingly lovely against the depth of blue beyond that for a moment he shielded his eyes. It had rained in the night, and the leaves of the forest caught the early sunlight on their polished surfaces with such brilliance that each leaf seemed a tongue of flame. The chiming of bird song was all about him, and the scent of flowers. This new-born delight in the beauty of the earth became suddenly so piercing an ecstasy that all his senses strained like hounds on the leash, reached an intensity of awareness that he had not thought possible, then checked and fell, leaving him stumbling forward over the grass shaken by an almost intolerable longing. Yet he thanked God that he had tasted of the love of earth. But for this journey with Tai Haruru he might never have seen the promise in her face.

  They reached the hospital. One boy, Taketu, had only a slight flesh wound in the leg, but the other, Te Turi, was so seriously injured that Tai Haruru had taken to himself the deliberation of movement, the half smile, that were always his in moments of extreme danger. Both boys were relatives of the chief, well born and of importance to the tribe. “I’ll need you, Kelly,” he said briefly.