Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh Read Free Book Online

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