Color Scheme

Chapter II Mr. Questing Goes Down for the First Time

“We’ve heard from Dr. Forster, sir,” said Dikon Bell. He glanced anxiously at his employer. When Gaunt stood with his hands rammed down in the pockets of his dressing gown and his shoulders hunched up to his ears one watched one’s step. Gaunt turned away from the window, and Dikon noticed apprehensively that his leg was very stiff this morning.

“Ha!” said Gaunt.

“He makes a suggestion.”

“I won’t go to that sulphurous resort.”

“Rotorua, sir?”

“Is that what it’s called?”

“He realizes you want somewhere quiet, sir. He’s made inquiries about another place. It’s in the Northland. On the west coast. Subtropical climate.”

“Sulphurous pneumonia?”

“Well, sir, we do want to clear up that leg, don’t we?”

“We do.” With one of those swift changes of demeanor by which he so easily commanded devotion, Gaunt turned to his secretary and clapped him on the shoulder. “I think you’re as homesick as I am, Dikon. Isn’t that true? You’re a New Zealander, of course, but wouldn’t you ten thousand times rather be there? In London? Isn’t it exactly as if someone you loved was ill and you couldn’t get to them?”

“A little like that, certainly,” said Dikon dryly.

“I shouldn’t keep you here. Go back, my dear chap. I’ll find somebody in New Zealand,” said Gaunt with a certain melancholy relish.

“Are you giving me the sack, sir?”

“If only they can patch me up…”

“But they will, sir. Dr. Forster said the leg ought to respond very quickly to hydrotherapy,” said Dikon with a prime imitation of the doctor’s manner. “They simply hated the sight of me in the Australian recruiting offices. And I fancy I should have little more than refuse-value at Home. I’m as blind as a bat, you know. Of course, there’s office work.”

“You must do what you think best,” said Gaunt gloomily. “Leave me to stagnate. I’m no good to my country. Ha!”

“If you call raising twelve thousand for colonial patriotic funds no good…”

“I’m a useless hulk,” said Gaunt, and even Dikon was reminded of the penultimate scene in Jane Eyre.

“What are you grinning at, blast you?” Gaunt demanded.

“You don’t look precisely like a useless hulk. I’ll stay a little longer if you’ll have me.”

“Well, let’s hear about this new place. You’re looking wonderfully self-conscious. What hideous surprise have you got up your sleeve?”

Dikon put his attaché case on the writing table and opened it.

“There’s a princely fan mail to-day,” he said, and laid a stack of typed sheets and photographs on one side.

“Good! I adore being adored. How many have written a little something themselves and wonder if I can advise them how to have their plays produced?”

“Four. One lady has sent a copy of her piece. She has dedicated it to you. It’s a fantasy.”

“God!”

“Here is Dr. Forster’s letter, and one enclosed from a Dr. James Ackrington who appears to be a celebrity from Harley Street. Perhaps you’d like to read them.”

“I should hate to read them.”

“I think you’d better, sir.”

Gaunt grimaced, took the letters and lowered himself into a chair by the writing desk. Dikon watched him rather nervously.

Geoffrey Gaunt had spent twenty-seven of his forty-five years on the stage, and the last sixteen had seen him firmly established in the first rank. He was what used to be called a romantic actor, but he was also an intelligent one. His greatest distinction lay in his genius for making an audience hear the sense as well as the music of Shakespearean verse. So accurate and clear was his tracing out of the speeches’ content that his art had about it something of mathematical precision and was saved from coldness only by the apparent profundity of his emotional understanding. How far this understanding was instinctive and how far intellectual, not even his secretary, who had been with him for six years, could decide. He was middle-sized, dark, and not particularly striking, but as an actor he possessed the two great assets: his skull was well shaped, and his hands were beautiful. As for his disposition, Dikon Bell, writing six years before from London to a friend in New Zealand, had said, after a week in Gaunt’s employment: “He’s tricky, affected, clever as a bagful of monkeys, a bit of a bounder with the temper of a fury, and no end of an egotist, but I think I’m going to like him.” He had never found reason to revise this first impression.

Gaunt read Dr. Forster’s note and then Dr. Ackrington’s letter. “For heaven’s sake,” he cried, “what sort of an antic is this old person? Have you noted the acid treatment of his relations? Does he call this letter a recommendation? Discomfort leavened with inefficient kindness is the bait he offers. Moreover, there’s a dirty little knock at me in the last paragraph. If Forster wants me to endure the place, one would have thought his policy would have been to suppress the letter. He’s a poor psychologist.”

“The psychology,” said Dikon modestly, “is mine. Forster wanted to suppress the letter. I took it upon myself to show it to you. I thought that if you jibbed at the Claires, sir, you wouldn’t be able to resist Dr. Ackrington.”

Gaunt shot a suspicious glance at his secretary. “You’re too clever by half, my friend,” he said.

“And he does say,” Dikon added persuasively, “he does say ‘the mud may be miraculous.’ ”

Gaunt laughed, made an abrupt movement, and drew in his breath sharply.

“Isn’t it worth enduring the place if it puts your leg right, sir? And at least we could get on with the boek.”

“Certain it is I can’t write in this bloody hotel. How I hate hotels. Dikon,” cried Gaunt with an assumption of boyish enthusiasm, “shall we fly to America? Shall we do Henry Vth in New York? They’d take it, you know, just now. ‘And Crispin, Crispian shall ne’er go by …’ God, I think I must play Henry in New York.”

“Wouldn’t you rather play him in London, sir, on a fit-up stage with the blitz for battle noises off?”

“Of course I would, damn you.”

“Why not try this place? At least it may turn out to be copy for the Life. Thermal divertissements. And then, when you’re fit and ready to hit ’em… London.”

“You talk like a Nanny in her dotage,” said Gaunt fretfully. “I suppose you and Colly have plotted this frightfulness between you. Where is Colly?”

“Ironing your trousers, sir.”

“Tell him to come here.”

Dikon spoke on the telephone and in a moment the door opened to admit a wisp of a man with a face that resembled a wrinkled kid glove. This was Gaunt’s dresser and personal servant, Alfred Colly. Colly had been the dresser provided by the management when Gaunt, a promising young leading man with no social background, had made his first great success. After a phenomenal run, Colly accepted Gaunt’s offer of permanent employment, but had never adopted the technique of a manservant. His attitude towards his employer held the balance between extreme familiarity and a cheerful recognition of Gaunt’s prestige. He laid the trousers that he carried over the back of a chair, folded his hands and blinked.

“You’ve heard all about this damned hot spot, no doubt?” said Gaunt.

“That’s right, sir,” said Colly. “Going to turn mudlarks, aren’t we?”

“I haven’t said so.”

“It’s about time we did something about ourself though, isn’t it, sir? We’re not sleeping as pretty as we’d like, are we? And how about our leg?”

“Oh, you go to hell,” said Gaunt.

“There’s a gentleman downstairs, sir, wants to see you. Come in over an hour ago. They told him in the office you were seeing nobody and he says that’s all right and give in his card. They says it’s no use, you only see visitors by appointment, and he comes back with that’s just too bad and sits in the lounge with a Scotch-and-soda, reading the paper and watching the door.”

“That won’t do him much good,” said Dikon. “Mr. Gaunt’s not going out. The masseur will be here in half an hour. What’s this man look like? Pressman?”

“Noüe!” said Colly, with the cockney’s singular emphasis. “More like business. Hard. Smooth worsted suiting. Go-getter type. I was thinking you might like to see him, Mr. Bell.”

“Why?”

“I was thinking you might. Satisfy him.”

Dikon looked fixedly at Colly and saw the faintest vibration of his left eyelid.

“Perhaps I’d better get rid of him,” he said. “Did they give you his card?”

Colly dipped his finger and thumb in a pocket of his black alpaca coat. “Persistent sort of bloke, sir,” he said, and fished out a card.

“Oh, get rid of him, Dikon, for God’s sake,” said Gaunt. “You know all the answers. I won’t leer out of advertisements, I won’t open fêtes, I won’t attend amateur productions, I’m accepting no invitations. I think New Zealand’s marvellous. I wish I was in London. If it’s anything to do with the war effort, reserve your answer. If they want me to do something for the troops, I will if I can.”

Dikon went down to the lounge. In the lift he looked at the visitor’s card.

Scribbled across the bottom he read:

Mr. Maurice Questing was about fifty years old and so much a type that a casual observer would have found it difficult to describe him. He might have been any one of a group of heavy men playing cards on a rug in the first-class carriage of a train. He appeared in triplicate at private bars, hotel lounges, business meetings and race-courses. His features were blurred and thick, his eyes sharp. His clothes always looked expensive and new. His speech, both in accent and in choice of words, was an affair of mass production rather than selection. It suggested that wherever he went he would instinctively adopt the cheapest, the slickest, and the most popular commercial phrases of the community in which he found himself. Yet though he was as voluble as a radio advertiser, shooting out his machine-turned phrases in a loud voice, and with a great air of assurance, every word he uttered seemed synthetic and quite unrelated to his thoughts. His conversation was full of the near-Americanisms that are part of the New Zealand dialect, but they, too, sounded dubious, and it was impossible to guess at his place of origin though he sometimes spoke of himself vaguely as a native of New South Wales. He was a successful man of business.

When Dikon Bell walked into the hotel lounge, Mr. Questing at once flung down his paper and rose to his feet.

“Pardon me if I speak in error,” he said, “but is this Mr. Bell?”

“Er, yes,” said Dikon, who still held the card in his fingers.

“Mr. Gaunt’s private secretary?”

“Yes.”

“That’s great,” said Mr. Questing, shaking hands ruthlessly, and breaking into laughter. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Bell. I know you’re a busy man, but I’d be very very happy if you could spare me five minutes.”

“Well, I…”

“That’s fine,” said Mr. Questing, jamming a flat pale thumb against a bell-push. “Great work! Sit down.”

Dikon sat sedately on a small chair, crossed his legs, joined his hands, and looked attentively over his glasses at Mr. Questing.

“How’s the Big Man?” Mr. Questing asked.

“Mr. Gaunt? Not very well, I’m afraid.”

“So I understand. So I understand. Well now, Mr. Bell, I had hoped for a word with him, but I’ve got an idea that a little chat with you will be very very satisfactory. What’ll you have?”

Dikon refused a drink. Mr. Questing ordered whisky-and-soda.

“Yes,” said Mr. Questing with a heartiness that suggested a complete understanding between them. “Yes. That’s fine. Well now, Mr. Bell, I’m going to tell you, flat out, that I think I’m in a position to help you. Now!”

“I see,” said Dikon, “that you come from Wai-ata-tapu Springs.”

“That is the case. Yes. Yes, I’m going to be quite frank with you, Mr. Bell. I’m going to tell you that not only do I come from the Springs, but I’ve got a very considerable interest in the Springs.”

“Do you mean that you own the place? I thought a Colonel and Mrs. Claire…”

“Well, now, Mr. Bell, shall we just take things as they come? I’m going to bring you right into my confidence about the Springs. The Springs mean a lot to me.”

“Financially?” asked Dikon mildly. “Therapeutically? Or sentimentally?”

Mr. Questing, who had looked restlessly at Dikon’s tie, shoes and hands, now took a furtive glance at his face.

“Don’t make it too hot,” he said merrily.

With a rapid movement suggestive of sleight-of-hand he produced from an inner pocket a sheaf of pamphlets which he laid before Dikon. “Read these at your leisure. May I suggest that you bring them to Mr. Gaunt’s notice?”

“Look here, Mr. Questing,” said Dikon briskly, “would you mind, awfully, if we came to the point? You’ve evidently discovered that we’ve heard about this place. You’ve come to recommend it. That’s very kind of you, but I gather your motive isn’t entirely altruistic. You’ve spoken of frankness so perhaps you won’t object to my asking again if you’ve a financial interest in Wai-ata-tapu.”

Mr. Questing laughed uproariously and said that he saw they understood each other. His conversation became thick with hints and evasions. After a minute or two Dikon saw that he himself was being offered some sort of inducement. Mr. Questing told him repeatedly that he would be looked after, that he would have every cause for personal gratification if Geoffrey Gaunt decided to take the cure. It was not by any means the first scene of its kind. Dikon was mildly entertained, and, while he listened to Mr. Questing, turned over the pamphlets. The medical recommendations seemed very good. A set of rooms — Mr. Questing called it a suite — would be theirs. Mr. Questing would see to it that the rooms were refurnished. Dikon’s eyebrows went up, and Mr. Questing, becoming very confidential, said that he believed in doing things in a big way. He was not, he said, going to pretend that he didn’t recognize the value of such a guest to the Springs. Dikon distrusted him more with every phrase he uttered, but he began to think that if such enormous efforts were to be made, Gaunt should be tolerably comfortable at Wai-ata-tapu. He put out a feeler.

“I understand,” he said, “that there is a resident doctor.”

He was surprised to see Mr. Questing change colour. “Dr. Tonks,” Questing said, “doesn’t actually reside at the Springs, Mr. Bell. He’s at Harpoon. Only a few minutes by road. A very very fine doctor.”

“I meant Dr. James Ackrington.”

Mr. Questing did not answer immediately. He offered Dikon a cigarette, lit one himself, and rang the bell again.

“Dr. Ackrington,” Dikon repeated.

“Oh, yes. Ye-e-s. The old doctor. Quite a character.”

“Doesn’t he live at the hostel?”

“That is correct. Yes. That is the case. The old doctor’s retired now, I understand.”

“He’s something of an authority on muscular and nervous complaints, isn’t he?”

“Is that so?” said Mr. Questing. “Well, well, well. The old doctor, eh? Quite a character. Well, now, Mr. Bell, I’ve a little suggestion to make. I’ve been wondering if you’d be interested in a wee trip to the Springs. I’m driving back there to-morrow. It’s a six hours’ run and I’d be very very delighted to take you with me. Of course the suite won’t be poshed up by then. You’ll see us in the raw, sir, but any suggestions you cared to make…”

“Do you live there, Mr. Questing?”

“You can’t keep me away from the Springs for long,” cried Mr. Questing evasively. “Now about this suggestion of mine…”

“It’s very kind of you,” said Dikon thoughtfully. He rose to his feet and held out his hand. “I’ll tell Mr. Gaunt about it. Thank you so much.”

Mr. Questing wrung his hand excruciatingly.

“Good-bye,” said Dikon politely.

“I’m staying here to-night, Mr. Bell, and I’ll be right on the spot if…”

“Oh yes. Perfectly splendid. Good-bye.”

He returned to his employer.

Late on the afternoon of Saturday the eighteenth, old Rua Te Kahu sat on the crest of a hill that rose in an unbroken curve above his native village. The hill formed a natural barrier between the Maori reserve lands and the thermal resort of Wai-ata-tapu Springs where the Claires lived. From where he sat Rua looked down to his right upon the sulphur-corroded roof of the Claires’ house, and to his left upon the smaller hip-roofs of his own people’s dwelling houses and shacks. From each side of the hill rose plumes of steam, for the native pa was built near its own thermal pools. Rua, therefore, sat in a place that became him well. Behind his head, and softened by wreaths of steam, was the shape of Rangi’s Peak. At his feet, in the warm friable soil, grew manuka scrub.

He was an extremely old man, exactly how old he did not choose to say; but his father, a chief of the Te Rarawa tribe, had set his mark to the Treaty of Waitangi, not many years before Rua, his youngest child, was born. Rua’s grandfather, Rewi, a chieftain and a cannibal, was a neolithic man. To find his European counterpart, one would look back beyond the dawn of civilization. Rua himself had witnessed the full impact of the white man’s ways upon a people living in a stone age. He had in turn been warrior, editor of a native newspaper, and member of Parliament. In his extreme age he had sloughed his European habits and returned to his own sub-tribe and to a way of life that was an echo in a minor key of his earliest youth.

“My great-great-grandfather is a hundred,” bragged little Hoani Smith at the Harpoon primary school. “He is the oldest man in New Zealand. He is nearly as old as God. Hu!”

Rua was dressed in a shabby suit. About his shoulders he wore a blanket, for nowadays he felt the cold. Sartorially he was rather disreputable, but for all that he had about him an air of greatness. His head was magnificent, long and shapely. His nose was a formidable beak, his lips thin and uncompromising. His eyes still held their brilliance. He was a patrician, and looked down the long lines of his ancestry until they met in one of the canoes of the first Polynesian sea-rovers. One would have said that his descent must have been free from the coarsening of Melanesian blood. But for his colour, a light brown, he looked for all the world like a Jacobite patriot’s notion of a Highland chieftain.

Every evening he climbed to the top of the hill and smoked a pipe, beginning his slow ascent an hour before sunset. Sometimes one of his grandchildren, or an old crony of his own clan, would go up with him, but more often he sat there alone, lost, as it seemed, in a long perspective of recollections. The Claires, down at the Springs, would glance up and see him appearing larger than human against the sky and very still. Or Huia, sitting on the bank behind the house when she should have been scrubbing potatoes, would wave to him and send him a long-drawn-out cry of greeting in his own tongue. She was one of his many great-grandchildren.

This evening he found much to interest him down at the Springs. A covered van had turned in from the main road and had lurched and skidded down the track which the Claires called their drive, until it pulled up at their front door. Excited noises came from inside the house. Old Rua heard his great-granddaughter’s voice and Miss Barbara Claire’s unmelodious laughter. There were bumping sounds. A large car came down the track and pulled up at the edge of the sweep. Mr. Maurice Questing got out of it followed by a younger man. Rua leant forward a little, grasped the head of his stick firmly and rested his chin on his knotted hands. He seemed rooted in the hill-top, and part of its texture. After a long pause he heard a sound for which his ears had inherited an acute awareness. Someone was coming up the track behind him. The dry scrub brushed against approaching legs. In a moment or two a man stood beside him on the hill-top.

“Good evening, Mr. Smith,” said old Rua without turning his head.

“G’day, Rua.”

The man lurched forward and squatted beside Te Kahu. He was a European, but his easy adoption of this native posture suggested a familiarity with the ways of the Maori people. He was thin, and baldish. His long jaw was ill-shaved. His skin hung loosely from the bones of his face, and was unwholesome in colour. There was an air of raffishness about him. His clothes were seedy. Over them he wore a raincoat that was dragged out of shape by a bottle in an inner pocket. He began to make a cigarette, and his fingers, deeply stained with nicotine, were unsteady. He smelt very strongly of stale spirits.

“Great doings down at the Springs,” he said.

“They seem to be busy,” said Rua tranquilly.

“Haven’t you heard? They’ve got a big pot coming to stay. That’s his secretary, that young chap that’s just come. You’d think it was royalty. They’ve been making it pretty solid for everybody down there. Hauling everything out and shifting us all round. I got sick of it and sloped off.”

“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.

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 exasperation.

A figure passed the window and stood in the doorway. It was Miss Claire. Dikon, whose job obliged him to observe such things, noticed that her cotton dress had been most misguidedly garnished with a neck bow of shiny ribbon, that her hair was precisely the wrong length, and that she used no make-up.

“Mr. Bell,” said Barbara, “we were wondering if you’d advise us about Mr. Gaunt’s rooms. Where to put things. I’m afraid you’ll find us very primitive. She laid tremendous stress on odd syllables and words, and as she did so turned up her eyes in a deprecating manner and pulled down the corners of her mouth like a lugubrious clown.

“Comedy stuff,” thought Dikon. “Alas, alas, she means to be funny.” He said that he would be delighted to see the rooms, and, nervously fingering his tie, followed her along the verandah.

The wing at the east end of the house, corresponding with the Claires’ private rooms at the west end, had been turned into a sort of flat for Gaunt, Dikon and Colly. It consisted of four rooms: two small bedrooms, one tiny bedroom, and a slightly larger bedroom which had been converted into Mr. Questing’s idea of a celebrity’s study. In this apartment were assembled two chromium-steel chairs, one large armchair, and a streamlined desk, all of rather bad design, and with the dealer’s tabs still attached to them. The floor was newly carpeted, and the windows in process of being freshly curtained by Mrs. Claire. Mr. Questing, wearing a cigar as if it were a sort of badge of office, lolled carelessly in the armchair. On Dikon’s entrance he sprang to his feet.

“Well, well, well,” cried Mr. Questing gaily, “how’s the young gentleman?”

“Quite well, thank you,” said Dikon, who had spent the greater part of the day motoring with Mr. Questing, and had become reconciled to these constant inquiries.

“Is this service,” Mr. Questing went on, waving his cigar at the room, “or is it? Forty-eight hours ago I hadn’t the pleasure of your acquaintance, Mr. Bell. After our little chat yesterday, I felt so optimistic I just had to get out and get going. I went to the finest furnishing firm in Auckland, and I told the manager, I told him: ‘Look,’ I told him, ‘you’ve got the right stuff! It’s modern and it’s quality. Listen!’ I told him. ‘I’ll take this stuff, if you can get it to Wai-ata-tapu, Harpoon, by to-morrow afternoon. And if not, not.’ That’s the way I like to do things, Mr. Bell.”

“I hope you have explained that even now Gaunt may not decide to come,” said Dikon. “You have all taken a great deal of trouble, Mrs. Claire.”

Mrs. Claire looked doubtfully from Questing to Dikon. “I’m afraid,” she said plaintively, “that I don’t really quite appreciate very up-to-date furniture. I always think a homelike atmosphere, no matter how shabby… However.”

Questing cut in, and Dikon only half-listened to another dissertation on the necessity of moving with the times. He was jerked into full awareness when Questing, with an air of familiarity, addressed himself to Barbara. “And what’s Babs got to say about it?” he asked, lowering his voice to a rich and offensive purr. Dikon saw her step backwards. It was an instinctive movement, he thought, uncontrollable as a reflex jerk, but less ungainly than her usual habit. Its effect on Dikon was as simple and as automatic as itself; he felt a stab of sympathy and a protective impulse. She was no longer regrettable; she was, for a moment, rather touching. Surprised, and a little disturbed, he looked away from Barbara to Mrs. Claire, and saw that her plump hands were clenched among sharp folds of the shining chintz. He felt that a little scene of climax had been enacted. It was disturbed by the appearance of another figure. Limping steps sounded on the verandah, and the doorway was darkened. A stocky man, elderly but still red-headed and extremely handsome in an angry sort of way, stood glaring at Questing.

“Oh, James,” Mrs. Claire murmured, “there you are, old man. You haven’t met Mr. Bell. My brother, Dr. Ackrington.”

As they shook hands, Dikon saw that Barbara had moved close to her uncle.

“Have a good run up?” asked Dr. Ackrington, throwing a needle-sharp glance at Dikon. “Ever see anything more disgraceful than the roads? I’ve been fishing.”

Startled by this non sequitur, Dikon murmured politely: “Indeed?”

“If you can call it fishing. Hope you and Gaunt aren’t counting on catching any trout. What with native reserves and the damned infamous behaviour of white poaching cads, there’s not a fish to be had in twenty miles.”

“Now, now, now, Doctor,” said Questing in a great hurry. “We can’t let you get away with that. Why, the greatest little trout streams in New Zealand…”

“D’you enjoy being called ‘Mister’?” Dr. Ackrington demanded, so loudly that Dikon gave a nervous jump. Questing said uneasily: “Not much.”

“Then don’t call me ‘Doctor,’ ” commanded Dr. Ackrington. Questing laughed uproariously. “That’s just too bad,” he said.

Dr. Ackrington looked round the room. “Good God,” he said, “what are you doing with the place?”

“Mr. Questing,” began Mrs. Claire, “has very kindly…”

“I might have recognized the authentic touch,” said her brother, turning his back on the room. “Staying here tonight are you, Bell? I’d like a word with you. Come along to my room when you’ve a moment.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Dikon.

Dr. Ackrington looked through the doorway. “The star boarder,” he said, “is returning in his usual condition. Mr. Bell is to be treated to a comprehensive view of our amenities.”

They all looked through the doorway. Dikon saw a shambling figure cross the pumice sweep and approach the verandah.

“Oh dear!” said Mrs. Claire. “I’m afraid… James, dear, could you…?”

Dr. Ackrington limped out to the verandah. The newcomer saw, stumbled to a halt, and dragged a bottle from the pocket of his raincoat.

To Dikon, watching through the window, the intrusion of a drunken white figure into the native landscape was at once preposterous and rather pathetic. A clear light, reflected from the pumice track, rimmed the folds of his shabby garments. He stood there, drooping and lonely, and turned the whisky bottle in his hand, staring at it as if it were the focal point for some fuddled meditation. Presently he raised his head and looked at Dr. Ackrington.

“Well, Smith,” said Dr. Ackrington.

“You’re a sport, Doc,” said Smith. “There’s a couple of snifters left. Come on and have one.”

“You’ll do better to keep it,” said Dr. Ackrington quite mildly.

Smith peered beyond him into the room. His eyes narrowed. He lurched forward to the verandah. “I’ll deal with this,” said Questing importantly, and strode out to meet him. They confronted each other. Questing, planted squarely on the verandah edge, made much of his cigar; Smith clung to the post and stared up at him.

“You clear out of this, Smith,” said Questing.

“You get to hell yourself,” said Smith distinctly. He looked past Questing to the group in the doorway, and very solemnly took off his hat. “Present company excepted,” he added.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Is that the visitor?” Smith asked loudly, and pointed at Dikon. “Is that the reason why we’re all sweating our guts up? That? Let’s have a better look at it. Gawd, what a sissy.”

Dikon wondered confusedly which of the party felt most embarrassed. Dr. Ackrington made a loud barking noise, Barbara broke into agonized laughter, Mrs. Claire rushed into a spate of apologies, Dikon himself attempted to suggest by gay inquiring glances that he had not understood the tenor of Smith’s remarks. He might have spared himself the trouble. Smith made a plunge at the verandah step shouting: “Look at the little bastard.” Questing attempted to stop him, and the scene mounted in a rapid crescendo. Dikon, Mrs. Claire, and Barbara remained in the room, Dr. Ackrington on the verandah appeared to hold a watching brief, while Questing and Smith yelled industriously in each other’s faces. The climax came when Questing again attempted to shove Smith away from the verandah. Smith drove his fist in Questing’s face and lost his balance. They fell simultaneously.

The noise stopped as suddenly as it had begun. An inexplicable and ridiculous affair changed abruptly into a piece of convincing melodrama. Dikon had seen many such a set-up at the cinema studios. Smith, shaky and bloated, crouched where he had fallen and mouthed at Questing. Questing got to his feet and dabbed ai the corner of his mouth with his handkerchief. His cigar lay smoking on the ground between them. It was a shot in technicolour, for Rangi’s Peak was now tinctured with such a violence of purple as is seldom seen outside the theatre, and in the middle distance rose the steam of the hot pools.

Dikon waited for a bit of tough dialogue to develop and was not disappointed.

“By God,” Questing said, exploring his jaw, “you’ll get yours for this. You’re sacked.”

“You’re not my bloody boss.”

“I’ll bloody well get you the sack, don’t you worry. When I’m in charge here…”

“That will do,” said Dr. Ackrington crisply.

“What is all this?” a peevish voice demanded. Colonel Claire, followed by Simon, appeared round the wing of the house. Smith got to his feet.

“You’ll have to get rid of this man, Colonel,” said Questing.

“What’s he done?” Simon demanded.

“I socked him.” Smith took Simon by the lapels of his coat. “You look out for yourselves,” he said. “It’s not only me he’s after. Your dad won’t sack me, will he, Sim?”

“We’ll see about that,” Questing said.

“But why …” Colonel Claire began, and was cut short by his brother-in-law.

“If I may interrupt for a moment,” said Dr. Ackrington acidly, “I suggest that I take Mr. Bell to my room. Unless, of course, he prefers a ring-side seat. Will you come and have a drink, Bell?”

Dikon thankfully accepted, leaving the room in a gale of apologies from Mrs. Claire and Barbara. Questing, who seemed to have recovered his temper, followed them up with a speech in which anxiety, propitiation, and a kind of fawning urgency were most disagreeably mingled. He was cut short by Dr. Ackrington.

“Possibly,” Dr. Ackrington said, “Mr. Bell may prefer to form his own opinion of this episode. No doubt he has seen a chronic alcoholic before now, and will not attach much significance to anything this particular specimen may choose to say.”

“Yes, yes. Of course,” Dikon murmured unhappily.

“As for the behaviour of Other Persons,” Dr. Ackrington continued, “there again, he may, as I do, form his own opinion. Come along, Bell.”

Dikon followed him along the verandah to his own room, a grimly neat apartment with a hideous desk.

“Sit down,” said Dr. Ackrington. He wrenched open the door of a home-made cupboard, and took out a bottle and two tumblers. “I can only offer you whisky,” he said. “With Smith’s horrible example before you, you may not like the idea. Afraid I don’t go in for modern rot-gut.”

“Thank you,” said Dikon, “I should like whisky. May I ask who he is?”

“Smith? He’s a misfit, a hopeless fellow. No good in him at all. Drifted out here as a boy. Agnes, my sister, who is something of a snob, talks loosely about him being a public-school man. Her geese are invariably swans, but I suppose this suggestion is within the bounds of possibility. Smith may have originated in some ill-conducted establishment of dubious gentility. Sometimes their early habits of speech go down the wind with their self-respect. Sometimes they keep it up even in the gutter. They used to be called remittance men, and in this extraordinary country received a good deal of entirely misguided sympathy from native-born fools. That suit you?”

“Thank you, sir,” said Dikon, taking his drink.

“My sister chooses to regard him as a sort of invalid. Some instinct must have led him ten years ago to the Springs. It has proved to be an ideal battening ground. They give him his keep and a wage, in exchange for idling about the place with an axe in his hand and a bottle in his pocket. When his cheque comes from Home he drinks himself silly, and my sister Agnes gives him beef-tea and prays for him. He’s a complete waster but he won’t trouble you, I fancy. I confess that this evening I was almost in sympathy with him. He did what I have longed to do for the past three months.” Dikon glanced up quickly. “He drove his fist into Questing’s face,” Dr. Ackrington explained. “Here’s luck to you,” he added. They drank to each other.

“Well,” said Dr. Ackrington after a pause, “you will doubtless lose no time in returning to Auckland and telling your principal to avoid this place like the devil.”

As this pretty well described Dikon’s intention he could think of nothing to say, and made a polite murmuring.

“If it is of any interest, you may as well know you have seen it at its worst. Smith is not always drunk and Questing is not always with us.”

“Not? But I thought…”

“He absents himself. I rejoice in the event and deplore the motive. However.”

Dr. Ackrington glared portentously into his glass and cleared his throat. Dikon waited for a moment, but his companion showed no sign of developing his theme. Dikon was to learn that Dr. Ackrington could exploit with equal mastery the embarrassing phrase and the disconcerting silence.

“Since we have mentioned him,” Dikon began nervously, “I confess I’m in a state of some confusion about Mr. Questing. May I ask if he is actually the — if Wai-ata-tapu Springs is his property?”

“No,” said Dr. Ackrington.

“I only ask,” Dikon continued in a hurry, “because you see I was approached in the first instance by Mr. Questing. Although I’ve warned him that Gaunt may decide against the Springs, he has been at extraordinary pains and really very considerable expense to — to alter existing arrangements and so on. And I mean — well, Dr. Forster’s note suggested that it was to Colonel and Mrs. Claire that we should apply.”

“So it is.”

“I see. But — Questing?”

“If you decide against the Springs,” said Dr. Ackrington, “you should convey your decision to my sister.”

“But,” Dikon repeated obstinately, “Questing?”

“Ignore him.”

“Oh.”

Steps sounded outside the window, and voices: Smith’s voice slurred but vicious; Colonel Claire’s high-pitched, perhaps a little hysterical; and Questing’s the voice of a bully. As they came nearer, odd sentences separated out from the general rumpus.

“… if the Colonel’s satisfied — It’s not a fair pop.”

“… never mind that. You’ve been asking for it and you’ll get it.”

“… sack me and see what you get, you — ”

“… most disgraceful scene — force my hand…”

“… kick you out to-morrow.”

“This is too much,” Colonel Claire cried out. “I’ve stood a great deal, Questing, but I must remind you that I still have some authority here.”

“Is that so? Where do you get it from? You’d better watch your step, Claire.”

“By God,” Smith roared out suddenly, “you’d better watch yours.”

Dr. Ackrington opened the door and stood on the threshold. Complete silence followed this move. Through the open door came a particularly strong wave of sulphurous air.

“I suggest, Edward,” Dr. Ackrington said, “that you continue your conversation in the laundry. Mr. Bell has no doubt formed the opinion that we do not possess one.”

He shut the door. “Let me give you another drink,” he said courteously.