THE REVENGE OF HER RACE By Mary Beaumont
The low
hedge, where the creepers climbed, divided the lawn and its magnificent
Wellingtonias from the meadow. There was little grass to be seen, for it was at
this time one vast profusion of delicate ixias of every bright and tender
shade.
The
evening was still, and the air heavy with scent. In a room opening upon the
veranda wreathed with white-and-scarlet passion-flowers, where she could see
the garden and the meadow, and, beyond all, the Mountain Beautiful, lay a sick
woman. Her dark face was lovely as an autumn leaf is lovely—hectic with the
passing life. Her eyes wandered to the upper snows of the mountain, from time
to time resting upon the brown-haired English girl who sat on a low stool by
her side, holding the frail hand in her cool, firm clasp.
The
invalid was speaking; her voice was curiously sweet, and there was a
peculiarity about the "s," and an occasional turn of the sentence,
which told the listener that her English was an acquired language.
"I
am glad he is not here," she said slowly. "I do not want him to have
pain."
"But
perhaps, Mrs. Denison, you will be much better in a day or two, and able to
welcome him when he comes back."
"No,
I shall not be here when he comes back, and it is just as it should be. I asked
him to turn round as he left the garden, and I could see him, oh, so well! He
looked kind and so beautiful, and he waved to me his hand. Now he will come
back, and he will be sad. He did not want to leave me, but the governor sent
for him. He will be sad, and he will remember that I loved him, and some day he
will be glad again." She smiled into the troubled face near her.
The
girl stroked the thick dark hair lovingly.
"Don't,"
she implored; "it hurts me. You are better to-night, and the children are
coming in." Mrs. Denison closed her eyes, and with her left hand she
covered her face.
"No,
not the children," she whispered, "not my darlings. I cannot bear it.
I must see them no more." She pressed her companion's hand with a sudden
close pressure. "But you will help them, Alice; you will make them English
like you—like him. We will not pretend to-night; it is not long that I shall
speak to you. I ask you to promise me to help them to be English."
"Dear,"
the girl urged, "they are such a delicious mixture of England and New Zealand—prettier, sweeter than any mere English
child could ever be. They are enchanting."
But
into the dying woman's eyes leaped an eager flame.
"They
must all be English, no Maori!" she cried. A violent fit of coughing
interrupted her, and when the paroxysm was over she was too exhausted to speak.
The English nurse, Mrs. Bentley, an elderly Yorkshire woman, who had been with
Mrs. Denison since her first baby came six years ago, and who had, in fact,
been Horace Denison's own nurse-maid, came in and sent the agitated girl into
the garden. "For you haven't had a breath of fresh air to-day," she
said.
At the
door Alice turned. The large eyes were resting upon
her with an intent and solemn regard, in which lay a message. "What was
it?" she thought, as she passed through the wide hall sweet with flowers.
"She wanted to say something; I am sure she did. To-morrow I will ask
her." But before the morrow came she knew. Mrs. Dennison had said good-bye.
The
funeral was over. Mr. Denison, who had looked unaccountably ill and weary for
months, had been sent home by Mr. Danby for at least a year's change and rest,
and the doctor's young sister had yielded to various pressure, and promised to
stay with the children until he returned. There was every reason for it. She
had loved and been loved by the gentle Maori mother; she delighted in the dark
beauty and sweetness of the children. And they, on their side, clung to her as
to an adorable fairy relative, dowered with love and the fruits of love—tales
and new games and tender ways. Best reason of all, in a sense, Mrs. Bentley,
that kind autocrat, entreated her to stay, "as the happiest thing for the
children, and to please that poor lamb we laid yonder, who fair longed that you
should! She was mightily taken up with you, Miss Danby, and you've your brother
and his wife near, so that you won't be lonesome, and if there's aught I can do
to make you comfortable, you've only to speak, miss." As for Mr. Denison,
he was pathetically grateful and relieved when Alice promised to remain.
After
the evening romp and the last good-night, when the two elder children, Ben and
Marie, called after her mother, Maritana, had given her their last injunctions
to be sure and come for them "her very own self" on her way down to
breakfast in the morning, she usually rode down between the cabbage-trees, down
by the old rata, fired last autumn, away through the grasslands to the doctor's
house, a few miles nearer Rochester; or he and his wife would ride out to chat
with her. But there were many evenings when she preferred the quiet of the airy
house and the garden. The colonial life was new to her, everything had its
charm, and in the colonies there is always a letter to write to those at
home—the mail-bag is never satisfied. On such evenings it was her custom to
cross the meadow to the copse of feathery trees beyond, where, sung to by the
brook and the Tui, the children's mother slept. And from the high presence of
the Mountain Beautiful there fell a dew of peace.
She
would often ask Mrs. Bentley to sit with her until bedtime, and revel in the
shrewd north-country woman's experiences, and her impressions of the new land
to which love had brought her. Both women grew to have a sincere and trustful
affection for each other, and one night, seven or eight months after Mrs. Denison's
death, Mrs. Bentley told a story which explained what had frequently puzzled Alice—the patient sorrow in Mrs. Denison's eyes,
and Mr. Denison's harassed and dejected manner. "But for your goodness to
the children," said the old woman, "and the way that precious baby
takes to you, I don't think I should be willing to say what I am going to do,
miss. Though my dear mistress wished it, and said, the very last night, 'You
must tell her all about it, some day, Nana,'—and I promised, to quiet her,—I
don't think I could bring myself to it if I hadn't lived with you and known
you." And then the good nurse told her strange and moving tale.
She
described how her master had come out young and careless-hearted to New Zealand
in the service of the government, and how scandalised and angry his father and
mother, the old Tory squire and his wife, had been to receive from him, after a
year or two, letters brimming with a boyish love for his "beautiful Maori
princess," whom he described as having "the sweetest heart and the
loveliest eyes in the world." It gave them little comfort to hear that her
father was one of the wealthiest Maoris in the island, and that, though but
half civilised himself, he had had his daughter well educated in the
"bishop's" and other English schools. To them she was a savage. There
was no threat of disinheritance, for there was nothing for him to inherit.
There was little money, and the estate was entailed on the elder brother. But
all that could be done to intimidate him was done, and in vain. Then silence
fell between the parents and the son.
But one
spring day came the news of a grandson, called Benjamin after his grandfather,
and an urgent letter from their boy himself, enclosing a prettily and humbly
worded note from the new strange daughter, begging for an English nurse. She
told them that she had now no father and no mother, for they had died before
the baby came, and if she might love her husband's parents a little she would
be glad.
"My
lady read the letters to me herself," Mrs. Bentley said; "I'd taken
the housekeeper's place a bit before, and she asked me to find her a sensible
young woman. Well, I tried, but there wasn't a girl in the place that was fit
to nurse Master Horace's child. And the end of it was, I came myself, for Master
Horace had been like my own when he was a little lad.
My lady pretended to be
vexed with me, but the day I sailed she thanked me in words I never thought to
hear from her, for she was a bit proud always." The faithful servant's
voice trembled. She leaned back in her chair, and forgot for the moment the new
house and the new duties. She was back again in the old nursery with the
fair-haired child playing about her knees. But Alice's face recalled her, and
she continued the story. She had, she said, dreaded the meeting with her new
mistress, and was prepared to find her "a sort of a heathen woman, who'd
pull down Master Horace till he couldn't call himself a gentleman."
But
when she saw the graceful creature who received her with gentle words and
gestures of kindliness, and when she found her young master not only content,
but happy, and when she took in her arms the laughing healthy baby, she
felt—though she regretted its dark eyes and hair—more at home than she could
have believed possible. The nurseries were so large and comfortable, and so
much consideration was shown to her, that she confessed, "I should have
been more ungrateful than a cat if I hadn't settled comfortable."
Then
came nearly five happy years, during which time her young mistress had found a
warm and secure place in the good Yorkshire heart. "She was that loving
and that kind that Dick Burdas, the groom, used to say that he believed she was
an angel as had took up with them dark folks, to show 'em what an angel was
like." Mrs. Bentley went on:
"She
wasn't always quite happy, and I wondered what brought the shadow into her
face, and why she would at times sigh that deep that I could have cried. After
a bit I knew what it was. It was the Maori in her. She told me one night that
she was a wicked woman, and ought never to have married Master Horace, for she
got tired sometimes of the English house and its ways, and longed for her
father's whare; (that's a native
hut, miss). She grieved something awful one day when she had been to see old
Tim, the Maori who lives behind the stables. She called herself a bad and
ungrateful woman, and thought there must be some evil spirit in her tempting
her into the old ways, because, when she saw Tim eating, and you know what bad
stuff they eat, she had fair longed to join him. She gave me a fright I didn't
get over for nigh a week. She leaned her bonny head against my knee, and I
stroked her cheek and hummed some silly nursery tune,—for she was all of a
tremble and like a child,—and she fell asleep just where she was."
"Poor
thing!" said Alice, softly.
"Eh,
but it's what's coming that upsets me, ma'am. Eh, what suffering for my pretty
lamb, and her that wouldn't have hurt a worm! Baby would be about six months
old when she came in one day with him in her arms, and they were a
picture. His little hand was fast in her hair. She always walked as if she'd
wheels on her feet, that gliding and graceful. She had on a sort of sheeny
yellow silk, and her cheeks were like them damask roses at home, and her eyes
fair shone like stars. 'Isn't he a beauty, Nana?' she asked me. 'If only he had
blue eyes, and that hair of gold like my husband's, and not these ugly eyes of
mine!' And as she spoke she sighed as I dreaded to hear. Then she told me to
help her to unpack her new dress from Paris, which she was to wear at the
Rochester races the next day. Master Horace always chose her dresses, and he
was right proud of her in them. And next morning he came into the nursery with
her, and she was all in pale red, and that beautiful! 'Isn't she scrumptious,
Nana?' he said, in his boyish way. 'Don't spoil her dress, children. How like
her Marie grows!' Those two little ones they had got her on her knees on the
ground, and were hugging her as if they couldn't let her go. But when he said
that, she got up very still and white.
"'I
am sorry,' she said; 'they must never be like me.'
"'They
can't be any one better, can they, baby?' he answered her, and he tossed the
child nearly up to the ceiling. But he looked worried as he went out. I saw
them drive away, and they looked happy enough. And oh, miss, I saw them come
back. We were in the porch, me and the children. Master Horace lifted her down,
and I heard him say, 'Never mind, Marie.' But she never looked his way nor
ours; she walked straight in and upstairs to her room, past my bonny darling
with his arm stretched out to her, and past Miss Marie, who was jumping up and
down, and shouting 'Muvver'; and I heard her door shut. Then Master Horace took
baby from me.
"'Go
up to her,' he said, and I could scarce hear him. His face was all drawn like,
but I felt that silly and stupid that I could say nothing, and just went
upstairs." Mrs. Bentley put her knitting down, and throwing her apron over
her head sobbed aloud.
"O
nurse, what was it?" cried Alice, and the colour left her cheeks. "Do
tell me. I am so sorry for them. What was it?" It was several minutes
before the good woman could recover herself; then she began:
"She
told me, and Dick Burdas he told me, and it was like this. When they got to the
race-course,—it was the first races they'd had in Rochester,—all the gentry was
there, and those that knew her always made a deal of her, she had such
half-shy, winning ways. And she seemed very bright, Dick said, talking with the
governor's lady, who is full of fun and sparkle. The carriages were all
together, and Major Beaumont, a kind old gentleman who's always been a good
friend to Master Horace, would have them in his carriage for luncheon, or
whatever it was. Dick says he was thinking that she was the prettiest lady
there, when his eye was caught by two or three parties of Maoris setting
themselves right in front of the carriages. There were four or five in each
lot, and they were mostly old. They got out their sharks' flesh and that bad
corn they eat, and began to make their meal of them. Near Mrs. Denison there
was one old man with a better sort of face, and Dick heard her say to master,
'Isn't he like my father?' What Master Horace answered he didn't hear; he says
he never saw anything like her face, so sad and wild, and working for all the
world as if something were fighting her within. Then all in a minute she ran
out and slipped down in her beautiful dress close by the old Maori in his dirty
rags, and was rubbing her face against his, as them folks do when they meet.
She had just taken a mouthful of the raw fish when Master Horace missed her. He
hadn't noticed her slip away. But in a moment he seemed to understand what it
meant. He saw the Maori come out strong in her face, and he knew the Maori had
got the better of everything, husband and friends and all. He gave a little
cry, and in a minute he had her on her feet and was bringing her back to the
carriage. Some folks thought Dick Burdas a rough hard man, and I know he was a
shocker of a lad (he was fra Whitby), but that night he cried like a baby when
he tell 't me," and Mrs. Bentley fell for a moment into the dialect of her
youth.
"He
said," she continued, "that she looked like a poor stricken thing
condemned, and let herself be led back as submissive as a child, and Master
Horace's face was like the dead. He didn't think any one but the major and Dr.
Danby saw her go, all was done in a minute. But it was done, and some few had
seen, and it got out, and things were said that wasn't true. Not the doctor! No,
miss, you needn't tell me that; he's told none, that I'll warrant. He's
faithful and he's close."
"O
Mrs. Bentley, how dreadful for her, how dreadful!" and the girl went down
on her knees by the old woman, her tears flowing fast.
"That's
it, miss, you understand. I feel like that. It was bad enough for Master Horace
with the future before him, and his children to think of, but for her it was
desperate cruel. Eh, ma'am, what she went through! She loved more than you'd
have thought us poor human beings could. And, after all, the nature was in her;
she didn't put it there. I've had a deal to do to keep down sinful thoughts
since then; there's a lot of things that's wrong in this world, ma'am."
"What
did she do?" Alice whispered.
"She!
She was for going away and leaving everything; she felt herself the worst woman
in the world. It was only by begging and praying of her on my knees that I got
her to stay in the house that night, for she was so far English, and had such a
fancy, that she saw everything blacker than any Englishwoman would, even the
partick'lerest. Afterward Master Horace was that good and gentle, and she loved
him so much, that he persuaded her to say nothing more about it, and to try to
live as if it hadn't been. And so she seemed to do, outward like, to other
people. But it wasn't ever the same again. Something had broken in them both;
with him it was his trust and his pride, but in her it was her heart."
"But
the children—surely they comforted her."
"Eh,
miss, that was the worst. Poor lamb, poor lamb! Never after that day, though
they were more to her nor children ever were to a mother before, would she have
them with her. Just a morning and a good-night kiss, and a quarter of an hour
at most, and I must take them away. She watched them play in the garden from
her window or the little hill there, and when they were asleep she would sit by
them for hours, saying how bonny they were and how good they were growing. And
she looked after their clothes and their food and every little toy and
pleasure, but never came in for a romp and a chat any more."
"Dear,
brave heart!" murmured the girl.
"Yes,
ma'am, you feel for her, I know. She was fair terrified of them turning Maori
and shaming their father. That was it. You didn't notice? No; after you came
she was too ill to bear them about, and it seemed natural, I dare say. The
Maoris are a fearful delicate set of folks. A bad cold takes them off into
consumption directly. And with her there was the sorrow as well as the cold. It
was wonderful that she lived so long."
Alice
threw her arms round Mrs. Bentley's neck.
"O
nurse, it is all so dreadful and sad. Couldn't we have somehow kept her with us
and made her happy?"
The old
woman held her close. "Nay, my dear bairn, never after that happened. It,
or worse, might have come again. It's something stronger in them than we know;
it's the very blood, I'm thinking. But she's gone to be the angel that Dick
always said she was."
Alice
looked away over the starlit garden to where the plumy trees stirred in the
night wind. "No," she said, fervently, "not 'gone to be,' nurse
dear; she was an angel always. Dick was right."
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