Sleep in the Woods

by Dorothy Eden

  “What did my aunt have to say?” she called after Joshua, as he climbed the ladder to the loft, dragging the small trunk after him.

  “She says you must go home.”

  “She would say that. But I can’t go at present.”

  Joshua pushed the trunk into the loft, and turned. “I’ve promised your aunt to find another woman as soon as I can.”

  “And where do you think you’re going to find one?” Prudence asked tartly. She rubbed her smarting eyes, and bent over the cooking pot.

  “I thought of asking Mr. Galloway to let me go into New Plymouth. I might find someone there, a half-caste Maori perhaps, or someone arrived from England looking for a job.”

  “Someone just arrived would be even worse than me,” said Prudence. “At least I knew what to expect when I came here. But I do it all so badly.” She sighed. “I thought I could do it so much better.”

  “The children like you, ma’am.”

  Prudence’s lip trembled. She hadn’t meant that to happen, but she was so tired, she had caught a chill, she thought, bending over the wash tub in the rain yesterday. It would be heaven to go back to Lucknow, to Aunt Charity …

  “The smoke’s hurting your eyes.” Joshua’s voice was gentle. Who, seeing him a week ago, bleared with drink, ineffectual, a failure, would have suspected his kindness and perception?

  “Yes—it’s bad today. I—perhaps I have a cold, too. Amelia had one this morning. I should have kept her in bed. I’m not a very good mother yet.”

  “You’re fine.” She realized that he had taken her hand. His own was work-scarred, the skin rough against hers. No one, she thought, had taken her hand in that way before, not with love or passion but with that inarticulate sympathy and gratitude.

  “I could be a good mother!” she heard herself saying fiercely. “If you’d be patient—It’s what I want to do.” She looked at his startled and grateful face. “It makes me a real person,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been a real person before.”

  XXVII

  TWO WEEKS LATER Peter came back to Lucknow. He arrived one evening, almost falling off his horse at the door, and having to be helped inside.

  “Peter, are you wounded?” cried Sophie in the greatest alarm.

  “Where’s Saul?” asked Briar tensely.

  “Did you get Te Kooti?” demanded Mrs. Whitmore.

  “Don’t ask the poor boy so many questions,” Aunt Charity ordered, taking charge as usual. “Can’t you see he’s worn out?”

  Indeed, Peter looked completely exhausted. He was unshaven, red-eyed and covered with mud. Also, he had developed a slight twitch to the side of his mouth which Briar found extremely distressing. But he said he was not wounded. He had some sort of fever, through being constantly wet and chilled, and eventually had been ordered to make his own way back from the trail.

  “Then the rest of the troops are not far away?” Briar asked.

  “Far enough,” said Peter obscurely. “That awful forest!”

  “And Saul is well?”

  Briar had to persist with her question, for Peter did not seem to want to answer.

  “Oh, Saul! He’s indestructible.”

  Whatever envy or dislike may have made him speak in that voice of Saul, it was obvious that Peter, with his dulled eyes and twitching mouth, was far from indestructible himself.

  When he began haltingly to relate something of his experiences his fear was in every sentence, his horror of the perpetual twilight of the forest, the dripping rain, the undergrowth cleared with painful slowness, and always the possibility of an ambush.

  “The track disappeared completely after three days,” he said. “The natives could follow it, but we couldn’t. We had to cut our way with hatchets and billhooks through supple jack and flax and those everlasting ferns. Finally we were moving at the rate of about a quarter mile an hour, working from dawn to dusk. And then it rained for three days without stopping. That was when I developed this fever. It was always half dark in the forest, even at midday. We couldn’t even light fires, everything was too sodden, and we didn’t dare show any smoke. We’d run out of food, so we had to eat horseflesh raw. And fern roots pounded up.”

  “How terrible!” Sophie gasped.

  “But didn’t you ever catch up with the enemy?” Briar asked.

  Peter’s face twitched. He rubbed his hands together. “Oh, yes. We attacked a pa but it wasn’t defended for long. The enemy slipped away into the forest and left only their dead. After that all we could do was kill any stragglers we could find and decapitate them.”

  “Decapitate!” whispered Sophie.

  “We had the Arawas and some Wanganuis on our side. They thought there was a price given for every head produced. So they gathered their ghastly trophies and tipped them out at Captain Maltby’s feet. Head after head!”

  He began to laugh breathlessly.

  “Peter dear!” remonstrated Aunt Charity, “I know you’ve had a terrible time, but do you think Sophie should listen to these things?”

  “But I must hear them,” said Sophie, in dreadful fascination. “You didn’t see—anyone eaten—did you, Peter?”

  “Thank God, no! We weren’t close enough to their camps for that. But we heard the chanting around the niu pole. That’s their sacred pole they stick up in the middle of the pa. Usually it has a human head on it, a white man’s. It would make your blood curdle when they dance the haka and scream. And Te Kooti has the nerve to quote from the book of Joshua, so a captive told us. And the Lord your God He shall expel them from before you and drive them from your sight; and ye shall possess their land, as the Lord your God hath promised unto you. What with listening to the early missionaries, and mixing Christian teaching with their own superstitions, they’ve mixed a fine potent brew, haven’t they? The land Te Kooti speaks of is this land,” he added slowly. “You know, it’s made me lose my taste for it.”

  Later he suddenly remembered that he had a letter for Briar.

  “From Saul. He told me what he said in it. We’re all to go back to Wellington at the earliest possible moment. I, for one, can’t go quickly enough.”

  Briar hardly knew what she had wanted Saul to write to her. She only knew that she could scarcely believe the brief emotionless letter he did write.

  My dear Briar,

  I have asked Peter to carry this letter for me. He is in bad shape, and must get back to Wellington as soon as possible. He hasn’t the temperament for the country in its present state. If Sophie has had her baby and is able to travel, there should be no delay. I want you, as well as Mrs. Carruthers and my mother, to accompany them. You also, I am sure, will be happier in a town. Circumstances permitting I will be down at some time before the summer is over.

  I am sorry things have happened in this way, but Te Kooti as well as other factors have combined to make it so. We are steadily getting the upper hand of the enemy, but there is still a struggle ahead.

  Forgive this hasty note. It is written in difficult conditions with rain dripping down my neck, and the captain is impatient to be moving on. I trust it reaches you safely, and I expect you to obey my wishes. Leave as early as possible. That is important.

  Your obedient husband, Saul.

  Sophie was the one who was overjoyed. She had decided she could not abide the country, and would have expired from loneliness and boredom had she had to remain there.

  “No one has asked you to prolong your stay in the country,” Briar said with some coolness. “The weather is better now, and the journey back to New Plymouth should not be too difficult.”

  “Now don’t be hoity toity, Briar,” said Aunt Charity sharply. “You know that Sophie can’t travel in her condition. I don’t intend to see her having her baby under a tussock bush. She will have to remain here until the child is born.”

  “And when will that be?” asked Peter impatiently.

  Sophie blushed with a semblance of modesty. “It will take its own time. I don’t believe it will ever be h
ere.”

  “Can’t you hurry it?” he asked uneasily. “We have to get away. It’s important to hurry. Saul said so. I’d hoped the baby would be here by now. But at least we can have our transport arranged, and our packing done to leave at the earliest moment.”

  When Briar could swallow her pride sufficiently, she asked Peter if Saul had discussed with him the urgent reason for their all leaving Lucknow.

  “Is it because he’s afraid of another Hauhau attack?”

  “No, I don’t think so. They’ve got the enemy pinned down in the north. The country here is clear.”

  “Then why—” Briar dropped her eyes. She could not let him see the unhappiness in her own. “Why must I go? My place is here.”

  “I imagine Saul thought you’d fret when we’d gone,” Peter said uncomfortably. “Some life and gaiety would do you good. He said he hadn’t been fair to you, expecting you to live in the wilderness like this.”

  “Does he say that I, too, haven’t the temperament?” Briar flashed.

  “Just that it’s an unnatural life for a woman.”

  “Others stay. No one suggests that Martha Peabody or Mary Galloway or Jemima Potter should go back to the town for gaiety. Why should I want gaiety, anyway? I’ve never been accustomed to it.”

  Peter looked away uneasily from her indignant regard. “I’m only telling you what your husband said.”

  “I don’t care to take orders. Even from my husband.” Briar’s voice, by the greatest self-control, was calm. “This is my place. I shall stay here.”

  He thought he could get rid of her that easily, she was thinking, anger seething within her. He might be down in the summer, or perhaps in the autumn, if the farm and his duties as a volunteer in the army permitted. And what was she, the discarded and unwanted wife, to do in the meantime? Live on the generosity of Aunt Charity, or, worse still, that of her contemptuous and righteous mother-in-law?

  So Saul had decided he did not want her as a wife, after all. The last night they had spent together when he had taken her so violently—that had not been from love, as some perverse instinct had made her hope. It had been from hate. Hate and anger and disappointment. Whatever he had hoped from her as a wife, and he must have hoped for something to have married her at all, she had failed to give him.

  Indeed, she had failed deliberately, for she had been too obsessed with her antagonism for him to think that there might have been other ways of looking at her marriage, and that being a wife was not just running a house and making one’s body available, reluctantly, when required.

  And now, whether she wanted to look at marriage in another way or not, it was too late. Saul had politely finished with her.

  Or no doubt he was congratulating himself that he had.

  But he was wrong. She was not to be got rid of so easily. She was Mrs. Saul Whitmore, the mistress of Lucknow, and there, no matter what her husband ordered, she would stay. She was quite determined.

  She spoke to Katie, putting the position to her. “Everyone else is to go back to Wellington, and you may do so, too, if you wish. Mr. Whitmore has sent instructions that we are to go, but I intend to say here, and I’d be happy to have you with me, if you would prefer that.”

  Katie did not hesitate. She nodded her untidy red head. “I’ll stay, ma’am. What could I do in Wellington, in my state? And besides Rangi might come back. I always watch for him.”

  “Then let’s hope he comes without his war paint,” Briar said earnestly. “If we’re to be here alone we don’t want any Hauhau attacks.”

  “Rangi wouldn’t let them attack Lucknow, ma’am. He told me so.”

  “I don’t know how much one can trust a Hauhau,” said Briar. “But I’m glad you’re staying, Katie. Now I want you to help everybody with their packing. Mrs. Fanshawe wasn’t feeling well this morning. I don’t think her baby will be long in coming, and we’ll all be busy enough then, without trunks to pack.”

  It was later that day that Katie came to Briar to report that Mrs. Whitmore would not permit her things to be touched.

  “Oh, she likes to do her own packing,” Briar said easily.

  “No, ma’am, it isn’t that. She says she isn’t going.”

  Briar found Mrs. Whitmore in her room, sitting at the window.

  “Katie tells me you refuse to leave,” she said bluntly.

  “I do.” The old lady turned her deep dark eyes on Briar. “I intend to wait here for my son’s return. I shall be perfectly all right. Mabel will look after me.”

  Briar heard, or sensed, the triumph in the old woman’s voice, and understood the workings of her mind. She was delighted about this turn of events. She was planning to witness the ignominious departure of Saul’s despised wife, the ambitious little upstart whom he should never have married, and to install herself in the house instead.

  Well—she had never deceived herself that Saul’s marriage had been popular with his mother, and this evidence of failure should not distress her too much. Nevertheless, Briar was conscious of a cold anger and determination.

  She said politely, “If anyone is to stay and welcome Saul home, it is to be me. I am, after all, his wife. And there is no need for two of us to be here. So please, Mrs. Whitmore, will you be prepared to leave within the next two or three weeks. Saul would be worried to know you hadn’t obeyed his wishes.”

  The old woman’s lips twitched slightly. Her eyes did not waver from Briar’s face. Once the intense regard would have flustered and alarmed Briar. Now she cared no longer. This was just an old woman fighting a losing battle, and one should be sorry for her.

  “And what about his feelings if you disobey him?”

  “Oh, that.” Briar shrugged. “He’s used by now to my flouting him. He may ask me to go, for my own good, but he will hope I stay.”

  “Are you so sure of that?”

  The pain struck unfairly at her. She had thought she had it in control.

  “Whatever he may think, that’s a personal matter between Saul and myself.” She looked at the rigid face, and added hotly, “I know you have always been against me. You judged me without giving me a chance. You thought I couldn’t run a house or manage servants or talk like a lady. But I’ve proved to you that I can do all those things. I can even make other women—women, mind you, not men—look at me in admiration. You know that yourself. You can’t deny it. You know that Saul has no need to be ashamed of me. I may not know who my parents were, but I was born with a certain amount of ability, and surely that counts most in a new country. Even having been a servant all my life has had distinct advantages. So why do you sit there condemning me? You’ve been doing it ever since you arrived here. I won’t endure it any longer. You shall go, with Aunt Charity and Sophie. I insist. This is my house. I refuse to ask you to stay!”

  The old lady waited until she had finished, then, looking at her flushed cheeks, she said calmly, “Anger becomes you. I noticed that when you were defending your friends in the village, and your servant girl expecting her quarter-caste baby.”

  “Never mind my looks, Mrs. Whitmore. Just stop criticizing me in my own house.”

  “You are quite wrong, my dear. I have never opened my mouth to criticize, and if it comes to that I think you do very well as far as being a good housekeeper is concerned.”

  “But not as a wife!” The words, half guilty, half indignant, were out before Briar could stop them. This horrible old woman made her lose her temper and her prided dignity. “Oh, I know what it is, of course. You are only waiting to see me looking as Sophie is. That’s all I am to you, the means of having a grandchild. Well, you may have to wait a long time—” Infuriatingly, her voice trembled. Saul had ordered her to go back to Wellington. Obviously he did not want her any more. It was one thing to resent him in her bed, but quite another to be resented herself. How she hated these Whitmores, mother and son, and their single-minded selfish desire that gave no consideration to her feelings. “You may have to wait forever!” she declared.

&nb
sp; “A great pity.” The remark, spoken little above a whisper, got beneath her skin in the way that Saul, with a sudden unguarded glance, could do.

  She looked up reluctantly, and saw that Mrs. Whitmore’s face seemed even more gaunt than usual, and her lips had a bluish tinge.

  “Mrs. Whitmore, are you all right? Is your arm paining you?”

  “My arm has recovered. Thank you for your courtesy.”

  “The doctor said you should rest more. You will be able to do that when you get back to Wellington. One is inclined to listen too much here. It becomes a habit. If a dog barks—”

  “But I am not going back to Wellington.”

  Their eyes met, stare for stare. Ruefully, Briar knew she had met her match. She could not, after all, turn the old woman out into the bush.

  “It seems that Saul will have to be angry with us both,” Mrs. Whitmore said in her harsh voice. “For I can see that you are as determined as me to stay. I am staying because I love my son. Yours must be another reason.”

  Before Briar could make any answer to that outrageous statement, the old woman went on calmly, “You’d better go and see to Sophie. If I’m right, the baby will arrive within the next twenty-four hours.”

  XXVIII

  THEY STORMED the pa just before dark, having lain hidden in the wet ferns, with the rain steadily soaking them into almost the same sodden state as the earth, until this moment of unguardedness of the enemy, when he had his cooking pots out and fires lit.

  The surprise was so complete that the initial resistance was over almost at once, and the surviving warriors were flying for their lives by the time Captain Maltby’s men poured over the palisades.