They finished their breakfast and went out into the garden, where the hot wind seemed to meet them like a blow in the face. “Earthquake weather,” said William briefly, and then forgot the menace in the bustle of departure.
A number of men were going with the great timber barges down to the sea: William himself, Scant and Isaac, Kapua-Manga, Jacky-Poto and several young Maoris. The whole colony had turned out to see them off, and when William and Marianne came out of the house there was quite a crowd about the jetty that had been built out into the creek. The last planks were rattling into place on the barges, and upon the foremost one food and water and blankets were being loaded, for the journey to the sea sometimes took more than a day. Tai Haruru was there, standing with folded arms upon the jetty and running a critical eye over the barges. They had been Marianne’s idea, but he had seen to the building of them. The native war canoes had been his inspiration, and each prow carried the proud head of a Taniwha. Each of these monsters was quite different, but each was equally imaginative, majestic, and terrifying, for Tai Haruru did not become less of an artist as the years went by. Marianne could never look at them without a smile, and a remembrance of the carved chair in Captain O’Hara’s cabin.
Tai Haruru saw her smile and came to stand beside her on the jetty. “So we’re to be left alone together, ma’am,” he said politely.
“Not for the first time,” replied Marianne tartly.
“As a rule I see little of you upon these occasions,” said Tai Haruru. “This time I hope I shall see more.”
She looked up at him, surprised at the unusual gentleness of his tone. He was looking at her very kindly. He had been persistently kind ever since he had known that the baby was on the way. She did not know if the kindness was for herself as herself, or simply for the vehicle that was to bring new life into the world.
There was a shout, and all was ready. William kissed her tenderly and jumped from the jetty to the foremost barge, where Scant and Kapua-Manga stood beside the great rudder. They had no need of rowers upon the downstream journey, for they would drift to the sea. On the homeward journey Maoris from the fishing hamlet would help to row them back. “We’ll only be a few days gone,” shouted William. “Good-by!”
“Good-by!” called Marianne. “Good-by!” And she fluttered her white handkerchief as the mooring ropes were cast off and the barges pushed out into midstream amid the cheers of the settlement. There was always excitement at these little launchings. The precious wood, harvested with such tremendous labor, was setting out now on its journey to the great world. Something of their very souls, that had been strengthened and tried in the felling and the cutting and the sawing, went with it, to be fused with the souls of those who would use this wood. It was a sudden sense of the glorious oneness of humanity that quickened the air and lifted the hearts and raised the shouts as Tai Haruru’s great monsters raised their fishy heads and snuffed the air and bore the great barges away. They too were seeking their oneness. They were seeking their father Tangaroa, whose arms are the home of all that flaps fins and wears scale armor and disports itself upon the bosom of the deep. “Good-by! Good-by!” The shouts sounded ever more distantly, the barges drifted round a promontory into a deep and wooded gorge, and the settlement was quite suddenly out of sight and sound, shut away as though it had never been.
2
At last! A great sigh of relief broke from William. He was alone. Leaving the steering to Scant and Kapua-Manga, he settled himself in the prow, his arm flung affectionately round the neck of the carved monster beside him, and he was alone. For perhaps five whole days he would not see Marianne. For five whole days the fight upon which Samuel had started him was suspended.
To make Marianne happy, he had fought the drink with all the strength that he could muster, and he hadn’t done too badly, in spite of the scoldings that always awoke in him a wild desire to walk straight off and do again that for which he was being reprimanded. Suddenly he chuckled. What would Marianne say if she were to be told that the purpose of her rapscallion husband’s life was the salvation of her soul? He was well aware that she imagined it was she who was saving him. She thought it was her tirades, and not his own efforts, that were slowly conquering his weaknesses. Well, let her think it. He was living now only to make her happy. The boy would help. Daily he gave thanks for the little son who was on the way, meanwhile vigorously crushing down within him the strangely violent desire for a daughter. Not the least bit of good, his wishing for a daughter when Marianne had ordered a son, for Marianne was a woman who always got her own way.
He must get it out of his mind that they were having a girl who would be the living image of Marguerite. They were not. They were having a boy, a sallow, sharp-tongued little boy like Marianne. That little girl lived only in his dreams and his memories, where she danced over the sand at La Baie des Saints in her blue frock and flung her arms about him on the rock of Le Petit Aiguillon. What did Marguerite look like now, the woman of over thirty who had just nursed a beloved mother through a long and painful illness and now lived all alone in the big house at Le Paradis with a blind father? Though he never spoke of her to Marianne, there was scarcely a moment of the day or night when he did not think of her, the thought of her no longer a torment but an amazing refreshment, and sometimes she seemed so near that he could have put out his hand and touched her. It was after one of these times, only a few weeks ago, that he had done an odd thing—he had sent her the carved necklace that he had bought for her in China. He had found it flung forgotten at the bottom of an old chest in his hut in the forest, a chest where he kept a few little possessions that he did not want Marianne’s prying eyes to see—relics of his old seafaring life, and odds and ends that his Maori friends had given him—things which, if found in the house, she would have designated “rubbish” and thrown away. Taking it out, he had marveled afresh at the lovely carvings, and especially at the beauty of little Lung-mu hanging at the bottom. He had remembered that once he had thought of it as a tainted thing, unworthy to be sent to Marguerite; and, laughing at himself, he had hung it out on the branch of a kauri tree that the fresh wind might cleanse it. Then, sitting down in the hut, he had written to Marguerite. Since his marriage he had done no more than scrawl affectionate messages at the end of Marianne’s letters, but that day in the hut he had written her a long letter that would not be seen by Marianne. It had been an absurd, childish letter, telling her the story of Lung-mu who protects sailormen, and the stories of the other little figures on the necklace, and he had described with picturesqueness and a wealth of detail, and an ease that had come to him from he knew not where, the lovely country where he lived and his life as a lumberman. He had told her about every detail of the long day’s work in the forest, even giving her the time of day when various things were done, and about the barges with the sea monsters on their prows, and how the wood was taken down the creek to the sea. He had told her about the flowers and the birds and the fishes, and about the Maoris, and about Samuel and Susanna, and Tai Haruru and Scant and Isaac. And he had described the house and garden and the settlement, and drawn her an absurd little map to show her the lay of the land. He had not mentioned Marianne until the very end of the letter, when he had said, “Marianne is waiting now for her child. It is to be a boy, but I think I would have liked a girl with fair hair and blue eyes. Marianne will be an excellent mother, as she is an excellent wife and housekeeper and businesswoman. I am much blest in my wife. I try to live only to make her happy. Her welfare and that of her child is the reason for existence. She would send her love did she know that I am writing to you. Though you are so far away, the bond between us is very strong. There is a saying I have heard somewhere, ‘A threefold cord shall not be broken.’ You have my love and devotion always. I think of you day and night. William.” He had wasted nearly a whole day writing this letter, and Tai Haruru, who had been going on a trip to Wellington, had taken it with him to be sent to England upon the next ship
, so that Marianne had known nothing about it. It had given him a strange feeling of reassurance to think that now Marguerite would know all about his life, and would know also that he loved her. He felt somehow that what was held within the consciousness of Marguerite was safe, and that therefore the mere fact that she knew about his life would be a guarantee that he would make a worth-while thing of it; and he felt too, fumblingly and vaguely, that her knowledge of his love would add joy to her consciousness, and so increase its depth and saving power. The reassurance was still with him as he drifted down the creek with his wood, and the slow slipping by of the water, the perpetual lovely withdrawal of fern-covered banks and trees and flowers and bushes, the perpetual swelling and dying away of bird-voices and wind-song and forest perfumes, gave to him the sense of being utterly divorced from time and space. They did not matter much. What mattered was the perpetual interweaving of spirit with spirit, each striving for that rightful adjustment one to another that if it could be achieved should bring at last the kingdom of God upon earth.
Darkness overtook them that night a mere mile from the sea. William, straining his ears in delight, could hear the sound of the rollers on the shore. They camped in the forest, and while the Maoris lit a great fire of dried fern in a clearing among the trees, William and Scant and Isaac fished for eels in a lagoon bright with phosphorescent lights. They always did this, grilled eel for supper being part of the ritual of taking the wood to the sea, and William always enjoyed it. He liked to see lean, tall old Scant’s weather-beaten countenance, with the hooked nose and grey straggling beard, bent eagerly over the water, and fat little Isaac bobbing up and down in the shadows like an excited small boy. Isaac played Sancho Panza to Scant’s Don Quixote, and neither of them were objects either of wonder or of admiration as a general rule, but the strange lights upon the water lent such a mysterious and enriching dignity to faces and forms that they looked no longer human beings but spiritual emanations of forest and rock, creatures of a pagan world that here in the wilds had never died.
When they got back to camp, the Maoris were roasting lizards on the fern, an unpleasant habit that William deprecated. He himself ate only eel, with roasted sweet potatoes and the bread he had brought from home; the lizards were such jolly little beggars, it seemed a shame to eat them. He lay propped upon an elbow as he ate, lazy and happy, watching the absorbed Maori faces about him lit by the leaping flames. In the firelight the faces and long, lithe limbs might have been forged out of bronze. They ate quickly, hungrily, with pouncing, darting movements, and their eyes shone like living coals. They were savages when they ate, the firelight touching here and there upon a knife, a colored feather, the red belt of the war god Tu. They were children of the primordial forest, children of Tane-Mahuta the forest god, father and protector of birds. They might have been birds themselves, William thought, with their eagle faces and their colored plumes. When the meal was over and Kapua-Manga picked up his flute and sang in his own language one of the war songs of the heroes of old, the others rocking and humming to the refrain, William took up his blanket and withdrew a little to sleep by himself in the fern. Scant and Isaac and Tai Haruru, after almost a lifetime in this land, were very near now to the children of Tane, but he, even after those months spent in the bush, was still a white man, a pakeha. As the night darkened and deepened, he had felt himself mysteriously excluded from the circle by the fire. This pagan land was not his. His roots were not here but far away in a cool grey island where the Christian saints had lived and suffered, and Marie-Tape-Tout, not Tangaroa, kept watch upon the waves. A nostalgic longing came upon him for the days of boyhood that would never come again, and he fell asleep dreaming of the Island, hearing the sound of the waves upon the rocks below Notre Dame du Castel and the crying of the gulls in the wind.
He awoke with the sounds of storm still in his ears and lay for a little confused, not quite certain in which world he was. Then he was suddenly wide awake, aware that it was in the New World, not the old, that the wind was roaring through the trees with this tremendous and menacing note of warning. Then he heard Scant’s voice in the darkness, “Are those damn barges firmly moored?” and Isaac shouting to waken the Maoris, and he jumped up to join the other dark figures making their way through the trees to the steep bank of the creek.
Here they could see better what they were doing, for a fitful moon was showing through the hurrying clouds. Every now and again there was a squall of hot rain in the wind, and the creek was now flowing stormily, fed by rain in the mountains, the barges straining at their mooring ropes. Half the lumbermen were aboard them in a moment, throwing new ropes to the men on shore, lashing and knotting at furious speed. The precious harvest of their toil must be kept safe at all costs. There was no thought in any of their minds but the wood. But they were too late. William was standing on the bank, straining his eyes in the half dark to see the rope which a Maori was flinging to him from the foremost barge, when he felt the familiar and horrible tremor of the earth which, however accustomed one was to it, never failed to send an echoing throb of fear through one’s body. A cry of dismay went up from the Maoris, and those on the barges jumped ashore, for this was what they called “the seeking and commotion, when Old Earthquake reigneth,” and it was best to meet it neither sitting beneath a roof nor standing upon a ship, but lying flat on the ground.
There was a second slight tremor, and then a pause, and then it came, the worst that William had experienced in this land. One had the sensation that the earth was splitting and the forest falling, that the mountains were crashing down upon one, that the wind had the world in its teeth and was shaking it as a dog shakes a rat, that the sea was rising up to make war upon the heavens, while from the heavens there rained down fire and thunderbolt upon the sea. The elements were “seeking” each other in rage and confusion, and in the fury of the conflict boastful man was utterly humiliated, sucked down, drowned. William felt himself falling, falling, cried out aloud and knew he was not heard, clutched at the earth and felt it shudder away from his grasp, felt for foothold and found none, hurtled right over the edge of the universe into the darkness and nothingness of the chaos from which the world was born, felt the awful cold of it strike through to his bones and was engulfed in the darkness, his consciousness snuffed out like the flame of a pinched candle.
But not for eternity. Man is a tough creature, even when Old Earthquake is abroad. After what seemed like the passing of a century he was aware again of cold and darkness and pain, and clutched them to him almost with delight, because they were something, something, not nothingness yet, not nothingness. Hold on, hold on, he said to himself, gritting his teeth against the pain, steadying his mind against the darkness and the cold, trying to reach beyond them to what else might be within the grasp of his awakening senses. Then the roaring of the wind came back, the sound of a man moaning not far away, the taste of the blood that was running down his face from a cut on his head. For a little while he knew no more than that. Then he knew that the earth was steady again, that the first light of dawn was showing through the darkness, and that he was lying in shallow water tangled up in a mooring rope. He had been flung down the steep bank into the shallows of the creek and had hit his head against a barge. He shut his eyes, opened them again, and found fat little Isaac’s round red face bent over him in considerable concern. “The wood?” he demanded at once.
“All the bloody barges except this one carried off down the creek,” said Isaac, and swore savagely.
“Who’s that groaning?” asked William. “Not Scant?”
“No. Scant’s safe. Kapua-Manga. Branch of a tree fell on him. Scant’s getting him out.”
With Isaac’s help William disentangled himself from the rope and struggled out of the water and up the bank. He was bruised and shaken, and the cut on his head was painful, but otherwise he was unhurt. Isaac bandaged his head and then, in pouring rain but increasing light, they set about assessing the extent of the damage. The
world looked as though a naughty child had taken the contents of its toy cupboard and tumbled them out upon the floor. Trees had been uprooted, rocks had been hurled into the creek, the one barge that was left had had its side stove in and was filling rapidly, the bodies of two dead Maoris, killed by falling rocks, lay untidily upon the ground like broken dolls, and beside them knelt three dusky figures wailing out a terrible, monotonous dirge. Until their dirge was finished no help could be expected from the mourning Maoris, and the white men did not expect it. They rescued Kapua-Manga, found him not seriously injured, bandaged his broken collarbone, fetched food from the barge, and made a fire beneath a sheltering canopy of broken branches. Upon the appearance of food and warmth the mourners finished up the dirge at an increased tempo and joined the group by the fire with suddenly resuscitated spirits. By the end of the meal, the two dead men not being their relations, they were chattering like starlings, rejoicing in their own escape from death. But the white men were silent, wondering what had happened at the settlement.
William got suddenly to his feet. “My wife,” he said. “I must get back.”
“How?” asked Scant, looking at the swirling creek. “You may get a canoe from the village, but you’ll never get upstream against that weight of water.”
“I’ll walk,” said William.
“Man, it’ll take you days to make your way through the wreckage in the forest.”
William swore. “Then what the hell do we do?” he asked wretchedly.