“A distinguished guest should be given a fitting welcome.”

“He’s only an actor.”

“Mr. Geoffrey Gaunt. He is a man of great distinction.”

“Then you know all about it, do you?”

“I think so,” said old Rua.

Smith licked his cigarette and hung it from the corner of his mouth.

“Questing’s at the back of it,” he said. Rua stirred slightly. “He’s kidded this Gaunt the mud’ll fix his leg for him. He’s falling over himself polishing the old dump up. You ought to see the furniture. Questing!” Smith added viciously. “By cripes, I’d like to see that joker get what’s coming to him.”

Unexpectedly Rua gave a subterranean chuckle.

“Look!” Smith said. “He’s got something coming to him all right, that joker. The old doctor’s got it in for him, and so’s everybody else but Claire. I reckon Claire’s not so keen, either, but Questing’s put him where he just can’t squeal. That’s what I reckon.”

He lit his cigarette and looked out of the corners of his eyes at Rua. “You don’t say much,” he said. His hand moved shakily over the bulge in his mackintosh. “Like a spot?” he asked.

“No, thank you. What should I say? It is no business of mine.”

“Look, Rua,” said Smith energetically. “I like your people. I get on with them. Always have. That’s a fact, isn’t it?”

“You are intimate with some of my people.”

“Yes. Well, I came up here to tell you something. Something about Questing.” Smith paused. The quiet of evening had impregnated the countryside. The air was clear and the smallest noises from below reached the hill-top with uncanny sharpness. Down in the native reserve a collection of small brown boys milled about, squabbling. Several elderly women with handkerchiefs tied over their heads sat round one of the cooking pools. The smell of steaming sweet potatoes was mingled with the fumes of sulphur. On the other side, the van crawled up to the main road sounding its horn. From inside the Claires’ house hollow bumping noises still continued. The sun was now behind Rangi’s Peak.

“Questing’s got a great little game on,” said Smith. “He’s going round your younger lot talking about teams of poi girls and kids diving for pennies, and all the rest of it. He’s offering big money. He says he doesn’t see why the Arawas down at Rotorua should be the only tribe to profit by the tourist racket.”

Rua got slowly to his feet. He turned away from the Springs side of the hill to the east and looked down into his own hamlet, now deep in shadow.

“My people are well contented,” he said. “We are not Arawas. We go our own way.”

“And another thing. He’s been talking about having curios for sale. He’s been nosing round. Asking about old times. Over at the Peak.” Smith’s voice slid into an uncertain key. He went on with an air of nervousness. “Someone’s told him about Rewi’s axe,” he said.

Rua turned, and for the first time looked fully at his companion.

“That’s not so good, is it?” said Smith.

“My grandfather Rewi,” Rua said, “was a man of prestige. His axe was dedicated to the god Tane and was named after him, Toki-poutangata-o-Tane. It was sacred. Its burial place, also, is sacred and secret.”

“Questing reckons it’s somewhere on the Peak. He reckons there’s a lot of stuff over on the Peak that might be exploited. He’s talking about half-day trips to see the places of interest, with one of your people to act as guide and tell the tale.”

“The Peak is a native reserve.”

“He reckons he could square that up all right.”

“I am an old man,” said Rua affably, “but I am not yet dead. He will not find any guides among my people.”

“Won’t he! You ask Eru Saul. He knows what Questing’s after.”

“Eru is not a satisfactory youth. He is a bad pakeha Maori.”

“Eru doesn’t like the way Questing plays up to young Huia. He reckons Questing is kidding her to find guides for him.”

“He will not find guides,” Rua repeated.

“Money talks, you know.”

“So will the tapu of my grandfather’s toki-poutangata.”

Smith looked curiously at the old man. “You really believe that, don’t you?” he said.

“I am a rangitira. My father attended an ancient school of learning. He was a tohunga. I don’t believe, Mr. Smith,” said Rua with a chuckle. “I know.”

“You’ll never get a white man to credit supernatural stories, Rua. Even your own younger lot don’t think much…”

Rua interrupted him. The full magnificence of his voice sounded richly on the evening air. “Our people,” Rua said, “stand between two worlds. In a century we have had to swallow the progress of nineteen hundred years. Do you wonder that we suffer a little from evolutionary dyspepsia? We are loyal members of the great commonwealth: your enemies are our enemies. You speak of the young people. They are like voyagers whose canoes are in a great ocean between two countries. Sometimes they behave objectionably and are naughty children. Sometimes they are taught very bad tricks by their pakeha friends.” Rua looked full at Smith, who fidgeted. “There are pakeha laws to prevent my young men from making fools of themselves with whisky 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.