Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories Part 16

"And this, honourable members, is the solemn bond and testimony of a great nation, the written promise of our Queen and her Ministers to these people that their lands and their right to live in their country should be kept inviolate! How has that promise been kept? Think of it, I pray you, and let your cheeks redden with shame, for the pages of this Treaty are blotted with the blackest treachery and stained a b.l.o.o.d.y red.

And the Bill now before the House to rob and despoil some hundreds of native families of land that has been theirs before a white man ever placed his foot in the country is the most shameful and heartless act of all. I say 'act' because I recognise how futile is my single voice raised on behalf of my race to stay this bitter injustice. Rob us, then, but offer us no longer the ghastly mockery of parliamentary representation. Better for us all to die as our forefathers have done, rifle in hand, than perish of poverty and starvation on the soil that is our only inheritance."

"Rot!" called out a short, fat man wearing a huge diamond ring and an excessively dirty white waistcoat. This was the Minister for Dredges and Artesian Bores, a gentleman who hoped to receive a C.M.G. s.h.i.+p for his clamorous persistency in advocating the claim of the colony to "'ave a Royel dook as its next Governor."

"Shut up!" said an honourable member beside him. "Rauparaha doesn't talk rot. You do--always."

The Minister muttered that he "didn't approve of no one a-usin' of inflammetery langwidge in the 'Ouse," but made no further remark.

Rauparaha resumed his seat, the proposer of the Bill made his reply, and the House voted solidly for the measure.

That evening, as the young man sat in his chambers gazing moodily into the glowing embers of the fire, and thinking bitterly of the utter hopelessness of the cause that lay so near his heart, his door opened, and Captain Lionel Brewster, a member of the House and a favoured _protege_ of the Government, walked in and held out his hand.

"How are you, doctor?" and he showed his white teeth in a smile of set friendliness. "I hear you are leaving Wellington at the close of the session for the North Island. I really am sorry, you know--deuced sorry--that your splendid speech was so quietly taken this afternoon. As a matter of fact, both ------ and ------ have the most friendly feeling towards you, and, although your political opponents in this matter, value and esteem you highly."

"Thanks, Captain Brewster," answered Rau-paraha coldly. He knew that this polished gentleman had been sent to him merely to smooth him down.

Other land-grants had yet to come before the House, and Dr. Rauparaha, although he stood alone, was not an enemy to be despised or treated with nonchalance. One reason was his great wealth, the second his influence with a section of the Press that attacked the Government native policy with an unsparing pen. But, as a matter of fact, his visitor had a second and more personal motive.

However, he asked Brewster to be seated; and that gentleman, twirling his carefully-trimmed moustache, smiled genially, and said he should be delighted to stay and chat a while.

"By the way, though, doctor," he said cordially, "my people--my aunt and cousin, you know--have heard so much of you that I have promised to take you down to our place for a few days if I can induce you to come. They were both in the gallery yesterday, and took the deepest interest in your speech. Now, my dear fellow, the House doesn't meet again till Tuesday. Come down with me to-morrow."

"Thanks," and the doctor's olive features flushed a deep red; "I will come. I think I have fired my last shot in Parliament, and intend to resign, and so do not care much whether I ever enter the House again.

And I shall have much pleasure in meeting your aunt and cousin again; I was introduced to them some weeks ago."

"So they told me," and Brewster smiled sweetly again. "Then you won't come as a stranger. Now I must be off. I shall call for you after lunch tomorrow."

As Lionel Brewster threw himself back in his cab and smoked his cigar he cursed vigorously. "d.a.m.n the cursed half-breed of a fellow! He's clever enough, and all that; but what the devil Helen can see in him to make me invite him down to Te Ariri I don't know. Curse her infernal twaddle about the rights of humanity and such fustian. Once you are my wife, my sweet, romantic cousin, I'll knock all that idiotic bosh on the head.

It's bad enough to sit in the House and listen to this fellow frothing, without having to bring a quarter-bred savage into one's own family.

However, he's really not a man to be ashamed of, so far as appearances go.... And I must humour her. Five thousand a year must be humoured."

"Well, Helen, and what do you think of your savage?" said Mrs.

Torringley to her niece, late the following evening, as she came to the door of Helen's room before she said good-night.

The girl was lying on a couch at the further end of the room, looking through the opened window out into the shadows of the night. The pale, clear-cut face flushed. "I like him very much, auntie. And I have been thinking."

"Thinking of what, dear?"

"Wondering if my father ever thought, when he was leading his men against the Maoris, of the cruel, dreadful wrong he was helping to perpetrate."

"'Cruel'! 'dreadful'! My dear child, what nonsense you talk! They were bloodthirsty savages."

"Savages! True. But savages fighting for all that was dear to them--for their lands, their lives, their liberties as a people. Oh, auntie, when I read of the awful deeds of bloodshed that are even now being done in Africa by English soldiers, it makes me sicken. Oh, if I were only a man, I would go out into the world and----"

"My dear child," said the older lady, with a smile, "you must not read so much of--of Tolstoy and other horrible writers like him. What would Lionel say if he thought you were going to be a Woman with a Mission?

Good-night, dear, and don't worry about the Maoris. Many of them are real Christians nowadays, and nearly all the women can sew quite nicely."

Outside on the broad gravelled walk the young doctor talked to himself as he paced quickly to and fro. "Folly, folly, folly. What interest can she have in me, except that I have native blood in my veins, and that her father fought our people in the Waikato thirty years ago?"

Brewster had gone back to town for a day or two; but as he bade his aunt and cousin goodbye, he warmly seconded their request to the doctor to remain at Te Ariri till he returned, although inwardly he swore at them both for a pair of "blithering idiots." And as he drove away to the station he congratulated himself on the fact that while his fiancee had a "touch of the tar-brush," as he expressed it, in her descent, her English bringing-up and society training under her worldly-minded but rather brainless aunt had led her to accept him as her future husband without difficulty.

For the next two days Dr. Rauparaha had much writing to do, and pa.s.sed his mornings and afternoons in the quiet library. Sometimes, as he wrote, a shadow would flit across the wide, sunlit veranda, and Helen Torringley would flit by, nodding pleasantly to him through the windows.

Only two or three times had he met her alone since he came to Te Ariri, and walked with her through the grounds, listening with a strange pleasure to her low, tender voice, and gazing into the deep, dark eyes, that shone with softest l.u.s.tre from out the pale, olive face, set in a wealth of wavy jet-black hair. For Helen Torringley was, like himself, of mixed blood. Her mother, who had died in her infancy, was a South American quadroon, born in Lima, and all the burning, quick pa.s.sions and hot temperament of her race were revealed in her daughter's every graceful gesture and inflexion of her clear voice.

It was late in the afternoon, and Dr. Rauparaha, pus.h.i.+ng his papers wearily away from him, rose from his seat. His work was finished.

To-morrow he would bid these new friends goodbye--this proud English lady and her beautiful, sweet-voiced niece--the girl whose dark eyes and red lips had come into his day-dreams and visions of the night. And just then she came to the library door, carrying in her hand a portfolio.

"Are you very busy, Dr. Rauparaha?" she said, as she entered and stood before him.

"Busy! No, Miss Torringley. Are these the sketches you told me Colonel Torringley made when he was in New Zealand?" and as he extended his hand for the book, the hot blood surged to his sallow forehead.

"Yes, they were all drawn by my father. I found them about a year since in the bottom of one of his trunks. He died ten years ago."

Slowly the young man turned them over one by one. Many of them were drawings of outposts, heads of native chiefs, &c. At last he came to one, somewhat larger than the others. It depicted the a.s.sault and capture of a Maori _pah_, standing on a hill that rose gradually from the margin of a reedy swamp. The troops had driven out the defenders, who were shown escaping across the swamp through the reeds, the women and children in the centre, the men surrounding them on all sides to protect them from the hail of bullets that swept down upon them from the heights above the captured fortress.

A shadow fell across the face of Dr. Rauparaha, and his hand tightened upon and almost crumpled the paper in his grasp; then he smiled, but with a red gleam in his dark eyes.

"'The a.s.sault on Maungatabu by the 18th Royal Irish,'" he read.

"The brave Irish," he said, with a mocking smile, raising his head and looking intently into the pale face of the girl; "the brave Iris.h.!.+ So ardent for liberty themselves, such loud-mouthed clamourers to the world for justice to their country--yet how they sell themselves for a paltry wage to butcher women and children"--then he stopped suddenly.

"Pardon me, I forgot myself. I did not remember that your father was an officer of that regiment."

She gave him her hand, and her eyes filled. "No, do not ask my pardon. I think it was horrible, horrible. How can such dreadful things be? I have heard my father say that that very victory filled him with shame.... He led the storming party, and when the _pah_ was carried, and he saw the natives escaping--the men surrounding the women and children--he ordered the 'Cease firing' to be sounded, but----" and her voice faltered.

"But----" and the lurid gleam in Rauparaha's eyes made her face flush and then pale again.

"The men went mad, and took no notice of him and the other two officers who were both wounded--the rest were killed in the a.s.sault. They had lost heavily, and were maddened with rage when they saw the Maoris escaping, and continued firing at them till they crossed the swamp, and hid in the long fern scrub on the other side."

"And even then a sh.e.l.l was fired into them as they lay there in the fern, resting their exhausted bodies ere they crept through it to gain the hills beyond," added the young man slowly.

"Yes," she murmured, "I have heard my father speak of it. But it was not by his orders--he was a soldier, but not a cruel man. See, this next sketch shows the bursting of the sh.e.l.l."

He took it from her hand and looked. At the foot of it was written, "The Last Shot at Maungatabu."

His hand trembled for a moment; then he placed the drawing back in the portfolio, and with averted face she rose from the table and walked to the window.

For a moment or two she stood there irresolutely, and then with the colour mantling her brow she came over to him.

"I must ask _your_ pardon now. I forgot that--that--that----"