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Chapter XIII The Past Repeats Itself

I am afraid our conversation was a little grandiloquent after the Governor's departure.

"Of all the men I have met," said Helenora, "Sir George is the knightliest and kindest."

"Knightliest!" I agreed, with enthusiasm. "That is the word. I could fancy him cold and haughty with the nobles of the land, but gentle with children, and simple and kind to the lowly. Oh, Helenora! After all it is that that makes the great rangatira."

"What is a ranga terror?" Helenora asked suspiciously.

"Rangateera—a chief. The Maori words seem so homely, and more expressive than the English," I explained apologetically.

"You may use French," said Helenora, "or ordinary German vocabulary words, or Latin; but no Maori or any of those, because I don't understand them, and it is not polite to use words people don't understand."

I expressed my regret, and added the wish that if the young lady detected any other solecism in my manners she would immediately call my attention to it.

She relented on the instant. "Your manners are good," she said. "Most boys of your age have none at all. That's why I li——don't mind entertaining you. And it wouldn't have been a bit surprising if your ways had been horrid instead of what they are. As for foreign words, if I were page 177as clever as you are, I wouldn't mind whether it was polite or not; I'd stagger people with them."

"Would you like me to teach you Maori?" I asked.

She thanked me doubtfully. "I don't think it would be worth while," she said—"except that I should be glad to know something Miss Temple couldn't pretend to. But in England no one speaks Maori, so I should not even be able to show off with it."

Her words startled me, for they disclosed the thinness of the stuff of which my dreams were made. Helenora had come into my life and glorified it; now I saw how certainly, and at no distant date, she would slip out of it, taking the glory with her. My thoughts turned back to my own affairs and the recent interview with Lady Wylde.

"I suppose you knew who I was as soon as I told you my name, Helenora?" I said.

"Yes," she replied. "I was tempted to tell you, but I decided it would be better fun to keep you in suspense. It was the likeness to the Tregarthens that I first noticed in you. You are like your grandfather, but still more like your uncle."

"Is your home near my grandfather's?"

"Only a few miles away."

"Then, if I were there, I could see you often."

"You could I suppose, if you wanted to."

"I should want to," I said, with such complete confidence that she let the statement pass in silence.

We were back on the bench again in the warm sunlight; Helenora primly upright, her glossy-booted toe tracing a pattern in the soft gravel of the path, her fair curls screening her face on the side nearer to me.

"What did my mother tell you of your family?" she asked presently.

"Just that I had a grandfather and an uncle living."

"If your uncle does not marry again, some day you will page 178be Lord Tregarthen. But he is almost certain to marry again, unless——"

"Unless?" I asked, as she paused.

"Unless you come to England."

"Why should that make a difference?"

"The Tregarthens are a very proud race. If your father had been alive, they would have forgiven him; but they are afraid of his child."

"Forgiven him! Was there something to forgive? Then why should they fear me?"

"Not you, but what you might be; what it is very strange you are not—ignorant, almost a savage. Don't you see?"

I nodded. A great dread struggled with my curiosity. Was there a stain on the shield of the gallant knight, sleeping so peacefully on the windy hill-top? "Ought we to speak of these things, Helenora?" I asked.

"You have to know," she said hesitatingly. "Mother is not well. She told me to speak to you."

"Then you will tell me the story?"

She assented mutely, the screen of hair still over her face.

"Well?"

"Your grandfather objected to your mother," she began rapidly, "and when your father defied him and married her, he closed his doors upon him."

"What was wrong with my mother?" I asked in a whisper.

"There was nothing wrong, except that your grandfather did not want her."

"Why didn't he want her?"

"You mustn't catechise me," said Helenora, uneasily. "He didn't wish her for a daughter-in-law, and that was all."

"Perhaps she was a person of low rank?"

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"She was not an earl's daughter, but she belonged to a good family."

"And my grandfather turned them out?"

"He refused to receive them; he did not reply to their letters; he was very deeply offended."

I pondered the story, and an idea, born of my recent experiences, came to me. "Was my mother poor, Helenora?"

"I think she must have been."

"But my father had plenty?"

"He was dependent on your grandfather. I don't think he had very much."

"They fell into poverty."

"Yes. I am afraid so."

"Dire and awful poverty?"

"Don't talk like that. It is an old, old story."

"And I was born and my mother died. What happened then?"

"Your grandfather relented. He wrote to your father and bade him return, and bring his son—you—with him."

I laughed a laugh that sounded odd even to my ears. "And my father answered?"

"With a curse."

"So says his son."

"Oh, Cedric!"

"May my feet rot off before I cross the threshold of the man who sent my mother and father to their graves!"

"Oh, you must not! Listen! I have told you the story all wrong. You prompted me. You made me tell it you that way."

"You have told me the truth."

"No. For I haven't told you all the truth. There was something else—something which made all the difference."

"What was it?"

"You mustn't speak of it again—even to me."

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"Why not?"

"Because I don't want you to speak of it again."

"Very well."

"At the time your father ran away and married your mother, he was betrothed to some one else."

A suspicion of the truth flashed through my mind, "To whom?" I asked quickly.

"To my mother."

"That was why you said my mother was not an earl's daughter?"

"Yes. How quick you are!"

"I noted that because it seemed irrelevant. Tell me everything."

"The marriage was arranged when they were children."

"But were they lovers?"

Helenora shook her curls till they again concealed her. "Then they were," she said.

"When they were children?"

"Yes, and till your mother appeared."

"Then it was a boy-and-girl love; they did not know their own minds?"

Suddenly Helenora turned her eyes full upon me; they were very bright and steady. "You are going to defend your father?" she asked.

I understood what she meant, and great as was my pride, it quailed before the threat in the depths of her gaze. "He mistook the nature of his feelings," I urged.

"Very well. My mother was of no consequence. He could do as he pleased. Her feelings were nothing."

I was silent.

"You know that I am telling you the truth now," she continued, "and you don't like it. Don't think I am proud of my mother on account of this. I would sooner she had been as fickle as your father. She loves him still."

It was true. Only thus could I interpret what had page 181passed between Lady Wylde and myself. "But my mother," I exclaimed, grasping blindly at any hope in my dismay—"she, at least, was guiltless of any wrong to my grandfather."

"She was my mother's friend," said Helenora inexorably. "She met your father at my mother's house. She knew all about the relations between them."

"Was she very beautiful?" I asked.

Helenora tossed her curls with a motion of disdain. "Of course you think that will excuse everything," she said.

"No. I was only seeking to explain it. It is incomprehensible to me."

"Why?"

"How could he have looked at any other woman?"

"Then you think my mother pretty?"

"She must have been very like you, Helenora, when she was as old as you are—the same bright curls, the same kanohi tiaho."

"What is that?"

"Shining eyes."

"Oh!—I told you not to speak Maori."

"Yes. I apologise."

"… Nor English either."

"You asked me why it was incomprehensible."

"Yes, but that had nothing to do with my eyes."

"I was thinking—— But you will be cross with me."

"Well, if you are afraid …"

"No. I am not afraid. I was thinking … if we were sweethearts—you and I—there would be no other girl in life for me. If you had ever said you loved me, I should be yours for always."

I do not know how my voice sounded, whether it had the ease I sought to give to it; but I was in deadly earnest. My great fear was that she would laugh, but she did not. page 182I thought I detected a slight rigidity come into the poise of her averted head. Did it indicate anger? For quite a minute she was silent.

"I wonder if those were the words your father used to my mother?" she said at last. "How strange if they were!"

The fatal past rose darkly in front of me, but I persevered. "Will you be my sweetheart, Helenora?"

Though her face was invisible, I knew that her thoughts had in a degree forestalled my words. She did not move. Her chin was lifted and she appeared to be gazing at some point far off in the sky. Suddenly, her head came down and was concealed in her hands; her shoulders shook, and a low laugh escaped her. It was not a giggle—Helenora never giggled—neither was it a laugh of amusement, much less of pleasure. If there be a laugh of discovery, then hers was one. I had an unhappy feeling of a note of threatening in the sound, but it was gone in a moment. She spoke through her hands. "You have only seen me twice."

"But I loved you when I first saw you."

From the direction of the house came the sound of a bell. I doubt if I should have noticed it but for its effect on her. She sprang to her feet and, abandoning all concealment, turned her face directly towards me. Her cheeks were bright; her eyes full of the mystery of her thoughts. Shyness, mischief, defiance, fear, compunction, chased one another and mingled in their depths. Slowly and gravely she nodded her head.

"Does that mean you will, Helenora?" I asked eagerly.

Again she nodded.

"You will be my sweetheart?" I repeated, scarce daring to believe in my good fortune.

There was a touch of impatience in her third assent, and she drew a watchful step away from me.

A dozen literary precedents for actions the most ex-page 183travagant surged through my mind, but there was no precedent for this child, with her angel's beauty and her woman's brain. "Thank you, Helenora," I said in the end. "As long as I live I shall love you and you only."

Her eyes fell, and for a while she stood in silence, moving her foot hither and thither. Once her lips parted quickly, as though she were on the point of speech, but, if so, she thought better of it. When she did speak it was in matter-of-fact tones. "That was the luncheon bell," she said, "and I am as hungry as a hunter." But even then she did not look at me.

I have tried to portray this love scene rather as I saw it many years afterwards than as it seemed then. Had I thought of recording it on the moment of its occurrence it would have consisted only of one continuous expression of delight and exultation. As one in a dream, I followed my Helenora to the house door and thence to the dining-room. I heard her whisper that I was to put on my best manners; that I was to meet Lady Grey; that there would be two or three gentlemen present: and her little proprietary whisper thrilled me to the exclusion of the verbal contents of it. I could have faced the Queen herself with perfect calm at that moment. I was, indeed, on an elevation beside which the loftiest earthly rank became insignificant. When at the door she squeezed my hand—either in warning or encouragement—I was in a condition to extend patronage to the Governor himself.

And there was no need for nervousness. Lady Grey received me kindly, with a few words which showed she already knew of my existence; while the gentlemen—there were only two—nodded good-naturedly and absorbed me with a jest into their company.

"Helenora's flame, you know," said Sir Gregory Apple-thwaite, turning to the Governor's private secretary.

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"I wish I were young enough to contest the point," said the latter.

Helenora merely lifted her chin in disdain, and made her way to her mother's side.

The Governor entered a moment later and we all remained standing until he was seated. That was the only formality there was. A homelier and more cheerful little party it would have been difficult to find. I sat between Helenora and her mother, and though no word passed between the former and myself, I was subtly aware that she was nervous on my account. My greatest, indeed my only difficulty, was the apparent superfluity of cutlery and glasses with which I was provided. However, by carefully imitating Helenora's actions, I managed to allay her anxiety, and presently she returned to her natural self.

"I am only allowed in to lunch sometimes, when there is no company present," she told me. "Usually I have dinner with Miss Temple. She has a holiday to-day. I like being with grown-up people better than children, don't you?"

"Is Miss Temple a child?"

"Stupid!—Isn't Lady Grey beautiful?"

"All the white women are beautiful."

"I think you must be a little like Arthur. Did you think all the Maori girls beautiful?"

"No. But some of them are. Puhi-Huia is beautiful."

"Who is Puhi-Huia?" she asked quickly.

"I will tell you about her by and by."

"Do the Maoris have sweethearts?"

"She is my foster-sister."

No care that I could perceive brooded over the Governor's table. The young men chattered lightly of current events, mingling politics and pleasure as they mingled their wines, and imparting the effervescence of humour to either indifferently. It occurred to me that the Colony was not, in page 185their eyes, so important a place, nor so complex a problem, as it appeared in mine. Sir George might be aware of reasons for anxiety, but there was no reflection of that knowledge in the faces of his subordinates. They were concerned with the management of a new Colony of the British Empire. It was rather a lark, and, in any event, it was merely an interlude, which, so far as they were concerned, would probaby come to an end within the next year or two. I liked their strong, clear-cut faces, their method of speech, their imperturbable good-humour, their ready wit and strong sense, but I did not again make the mistake of attributing to them any responsibility in the course of the Colony's events.

The Governor himself was rather silent, and even abstracted, yet he had that peculiar alertness in his abstraction which I have since frequently noticed in men of intellect. All that did not concern or interest him passed unheard, but a witticism, an apposite remark, a little item of news, perhaps, was sufficient to disperse the mist from his blue eyes, to call up a smile of amusement, or a quietly spoken question of remark.

On the conclusion of the meal Lady Wylde took me to her own sitting-room. I have only a very hazy recollection of what passed between us, and that I attribute to the confused and conflicting character of my emotions. She wished me to say that I would return with her to England, when—or, perhaps, even before—Sir George Grey's term of office expired. She painted my grandfather and my uncle in the attractive light of her long and intimate friendship. She attempted to arouse in me motives of ambition and cupidity, and no doubt to some extent she succeeded; and the strongest argument of all, my love for Helenora, enforced and lent a glamour to every plea she used. But if I can boast of any virtue, strong in my childhood, and of whose tenacity the reader may judge in page 186the sequel, it is that of loyalty to faiths once formed. Unable as I was to explain or excuse the apparently heartless conduct of my father, I could not admit or believe that no satisfactory explanation or excuse existed. Call it a mental squint, if you will, it persists with me to this hour. But that was not all. Even if the conduct of my father and mother be allowed to be dishonourable on high moral counts, it stood absolved in the courts of Love, for that they two dearly loved one another there could be no doubt, and it could in no case relieve from responsibility the man who refused to accept the inevitable, who kept the fire of his anger bright for a whole twelvemonth, and only suffered it to die out before the cold blast of death, when it may be said that his vengeance had achieved consummation.

I do not know that this or any of it was evident in my replies to Lady Wylde; nor do I say that I had reached any fixity of determination. I could not gladly contemplate the idea of leaving New Zealand for ever, and the thought of a final abandonment of my foster-father and sister raised a mist in my eyes.

"But Lord Tregarthen is your own flesh and blood, Cedric."

"Yes, I know. But … but, you see—if it were not for my foster-father I should not even be alive."

"But you would like to go home? You would like to see England and the great places you have read about?"

"Yes—he taught me to read about them. He spent a great deal of pains on me. There was nothing in it for him, except care and trouble."

"Nothing?"

"What could there be?"

She stared at me for a long time from under her brows. "I shall write to him," she said. "You must give me his address."

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I do not know why this bit should stand out while the rest is nebulous and unresolvable, unless it be because Helenora had come in a moment or two before and was seated on a rug, her head thrown back on her mother's knees, her eyes fixed on my face.

"Has he told you about Puhi-Huia, mother?"

I was surprised that Helenora, who had hitherto found a difficulty with the simplest Maori words, should enunciate my foster-sister's name so correctly. I hastened to reply to her mother's mute look of interrogation with an inventory of the charms and virtues of my life's playmate; she also provided a bond I could not lightly sever.

"But you must remember, Cedric, that you whole career is at stake. Then, if these people have been kind to you, it may be in your power to recompense them. Your grandfather is extremely wealthy."

"Nothing could recompense them. You see … they love me."

"If they love you, child—and of course they do—they can wish nothing better for you than such an opportunity as this."

"I am not saying I will not go, Lady Wylde. I must have time to think, and I must learn what my foster-father wishes."

"Yes," she agreed. "You must write to him, and I will write also. There! We will talk no more about it at present."

I offered to take my leave, but to this Lady Wylde would not listen. "I am sorry I have no boys to entertain you," she said, "but Helenora will do her best. Come to the house as often as you please. Every day if you will."

Fancying some reluctance in Helenora's manner as she accompanied me from the room, I paused outside the closed door and spoke of it. "Would you sooner I went?" I asked directly.

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"Not if you don't speak about stupid things," she replied uneasily.

"Stupid?"

"Sweethearts and all that."

"But it is such a great thing. When may I speak to your mother?"

She came to a dead stop and regarded me with startled, angry eyes. "If you say one word to my mother, I will never speak to you again," she declared.

"But," I objected, crestfallen, "she ought to know that you have promised to become my wife."

"I! I never promised anything of the kind."

"Didn't you say that you would be my sweetheart?"

"I may have said that," she temporised. "That's nothing. Besides" (triumphantly), "your father and my mother were sweethearts, and they never got married."

"Oh, Helenora!"

"Well, did you not speak contemptuously of boy-and-girl love?"

"I could not possibly love you any more if I were a hundred."

By this time we had arrived at the schoolroom. A cheerful log fire was burning brightly on the hearth; but it caused no relaxing of Helenora's countenance, as she seated herself beside it.

"I did not propose that we should be married immediately," I continued gravely, as I took up a position opposite to her.

"I think you really are stupid," she said with a sniff. "Whoever was married at twelve years old?"

"I know of at least two," I replied.

"Oh what a——! Your Maoris, I suppose."

"Yes, Maori girls."

"Now I understand. Don't you know that the custom of the white people is quite different?"

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"Yes; I do know that. I only want you to say that some day you will be my wife."

"Why should I?" she asked rebelliously.

"I don't know why you should," I replied humbly. "I don't know why you consented to be my sweetheart; but the one reason will do for both."

"Will it?" she asked, and fell to musing, her eyes on the fire. "Ten years is a long time," she continued presently. "Long before then you will love some one else—as your father did."

"I will wait all my life for you if you say so."

"No, no! You will grow tired."

"Try me, then."

"If you dare me I will."

"I do dare you."

"If I say Yes, will you help me with my German exercise?"

It is due to Helenora to say that she denies that she surrendered on any such terms. Yet the German exercise is an improbable invention, and there is no dispute as to our being engaged upon it immediately afterwards—Schiller's" Song of the Bell."

"We are just starting it," said Helenora, cutting short my eager reply with a multiplicity of words. "And of all the flat, unpoetical things ever written in a foreign language—and that is saying a good deal—it's the flattest and unpoeticalest—I mean to look at. Fancy so many pages about a bell. What is it all about?"

"It is a sort of summary of human life. It is not so much the bell itself as the accompaniment it plays to the life of man—marriage bells, death bells, and so on. Give me the book and let me see how far you have gone."

Whatever Helenora might prove to be as a sweetheart, as a pupil she was humble and obedient, quick to grasp a meaning and apt to put it into clear words. It seemed page 190to me that Miss Temple must have a delightful task, but later on I found that it was not so. There was a species of hidden war between them, never entirely emerging, but also never ceasing. With a less keen-witted child the governess's pretence to finality in knowledge might have passed muster. She claimed to be, as it were, armed in knowledge; but Helenora, having once discovered a flaw in her armour, delighted in a subtle probing of it at all points, until, I fear, in the view of the pupil, it was but a thing of tatters.

"If she only wouldn't pretend! I hate pretence, don't you? She is really sound in the rudiments, and she speaks French beautifully; but beyond that I am always in doubt of her. Take German, for instance; I am quite sure she has only a very small vocabulary, but she never admits the need for consulting a dictionary on her own account. I know she does it on the sly, because I've caught her at it. And then, when we've got all the meanings of the words, they don't make sense. She pretends to understand them, and that makes me wicked. I suppress all my brains and make my face look like a cow's. She explains over and over again, and I become more cow-like with each repetition. Would you like to see me make a face like a cow?"

I record all this because it serves to explain the footing on which I stood with Helenora during the next three years. If I had never found cause to bless my foster-father for the care he had taken in educating me, I did so now. It enabled me to establish a hold over my sweetheart from which she was unwilling to free herself. By her greed for knowledge, far more than any depth of liking, I maintained my position as her acknowledged lover. It was that that won me the right, on rare occasions, to hold her hand; to that I owe her frugal, fugitive kisses and the repetition of the promise that "some day" she would be my wife.