The Story of Wi

by G. B. Lancaster

The Story of Wi

By G. B. LANCASTER

 

And if I have taken the common clay,
And shaped it cunningly
In the form of a god that was digged a sod,
The greater honor to me.

HE was a clod when Lane found him—a piece of six-year-old Maori flesh, with the carriage of a conqueror, and the tongue of a dissolute gutter-snipe, and the brown of the earth that bore him in his supple skin. Lane was looking for land in those days, and waded deep in the waters of indecision before he finally paid tithe to Mindoorie in the province of Southland. He had searched Taranaki, Wairarapa, and Auckland in the north, and had fallen foul of many native kiangas where the pakeha was unwelcome. He had nearly got himself mere’d (this is done with a thing like a tomahawk) a score of times, and in those ways he assimilated some unofficial dregs of Maori information.

Then he met Wi—which is, in full, Wiremu Poananga—which is, in translation, William Clematis. Wi’s father was dead in a coastal raid, and Wi's mother, being sick, had been cast out, according to custom, that she might die without defilement to the pa. This she obligingly did, and Wi sat on her body out in the white sunlight, and beat her with his baby fists because she took no heed of him.

Lane rode past, and he hooked up the child with his crop-handle under the armpit, and demanded explanation in his broken Maori from the men who lolled at the gates.

They could not touch the body until certain formulæ had been observed, for the Maori body is sacred, both in life and death. And they could not touch Wi, for Wi had touched the Thing on the grass. This was made clear while Wi stood up, defiant in his nakedness, and hurled all the bad words of his knowledge at the pakeha. He was grandly built (but this is a race-mark. Maoris make the finest footballers in the world until they grow tallowy from overeating), and his strong little face had none of the round-eyed stolidity of the ordinary Maori infant.

“He’s too good to go loafing about in a pa all his days,” said Lane, and forthwith sought out Wi’s only remaining relative. For Wi came of a tribe that had fallen on evil days, but—in some crosswise fashion—he had the blood of Te Arawa in his veins.

The woman who belonged to Wi was old and toothless, and a smoker of some sixty years’ standing. She spoke no English, and understood less. But Lane made pantomime with his tobacco-pouch and the wrathful Wi, and in due time the bargain was struck. The pa provided Wi with a shirt that came to his middle, and trousers that buttoned over the shoulders and made him behave outrageously. Then Lane set him on the horn of the saddle, and took him away to be fashioned into a pakeha. It was the act of a very young man, and it was quite possible that it would lead to complications later on. But Lane gloried in the knowledge that it was a chance in three lifetimes, Maoris being notoriously devoted to their babies, and won the love of the fierce little heart in a week.

“What are you going to do with the brat?” asked Brazenose when Lane came back to town. “He follows you round like a poodle-dog, and he does seem to have a mortal dislike to clothes. Besides, he will be most sinfully jealous when you form other ties.”

When Lane left England, he had said in his wrath that he would never marry. And it may here be noted that he kept that oath.

“We’ll meet that when it comes. Just now I’ve to teach him our lingo, and cleanly habits. He’s quick in the uptake. And I want to see how the Maori temperament stands English training.”

This was before education of the native became a matter of custom, and Brazenose grinned his derision. Wi had left a double row of teeth-marks in his arm that morning.

“You’ll find it a dangerous amusement, then. The imp has too much devil in him for my taste.”

But Lane understood the plucky, passionate baby soul rather better.

“Don’t you believe it. He’ll be a fine man one day. There’s spunk in the little beggar. I thrashed him yesterday, and never got a chirp out of him. Hurt him properly, too, and he took it like a man. Yes; I’ll make something valuable out of Wi ’fore all’s done.”

“Wish you joy,” said Brazenose, unconvinced.

But Lane laughed, and betook himself without fear to the making of Wi.

Wi was a solemn infant, with strong white teeth that tested all strange things, from the soap in Lane’s dressing-room to saddle-straps and a new half-sovereign. This last he folded as fingers fold paper, and sealed with indent of sharp teeth; and Lane wore it on his watch-chain until his death.

Every dog in the town followed the child, and he played in the gutters with those of his race, and was severely whipped in consequence quite three times a week. Lane ruled with a stern but absolutely just hand, and there came to Wi slowly some notions of truth and uprightness—the two things which nature has not bestowed on the Maori in any prodigality.

It is very true that he found delight in sinning up to the full of his power; but his unbreakable love for Lane was such that it ever gave to the man the victory when the two wills met. Men at the club called the child “Lane’s joke,” and took much pleasure in teasing him until Wi learned the futility of losing his temper, and wielded the cunning of his tongue instead. Then Lane began really to feel the burden of responsibility. Through the months that rushed into the years Wi drank of more bitter waters than are usually poured for the young, and tasted maturer joys. For, like all aboriginals, he ripened out of his time, and was wise in things that a boy should not know, before the down came on his lip. In the school, where he mixed with pakeha boys alone, he brought trouble on his black head at the first. He used their speech and their games, but he held his own by the power of his fist, and sang most improper songs of love and war and hate in the dormitories of nights. And when the Head made objection, Wi mimicked him down the corridor-length, and went from his punishment to sin again.

Lane came in the first term-time to see how many of the commandments the boy had broken. For well he knew that not to all pakeha is the Maori brother under the skin.

He walked on to the playground with the Head; and Wi, having picked himself out of a practise scrum, galloped up the field headlong, capless, with gleaming eyes and teeth.

He shook hands with a white man’s grip, and gave his greeting in a white man’s tongue. Lane looked him over in complete satisfaction.

“And that’s all right. You are a regular pakeha now, Wi.”

“Wai? I am more than the pakeha,” said the boy, strutting. “I can lick every chap here ’cept Calf Richards, and he’s learnt boxing. I want to learn boxing, too, pater.”

“You’ve licked ’em all?” demanded Lane. For there were well over a hundred boys, and Wi had been there just three months.

“All that were big enough.” The quick blood blackened Wi’s face. “They called me ‘pononga’ E-E-! Nga tangata kino!”

“Pononga” means slave. It is the one epithet which the Maori will not forgive when it is used with intent.

“It’s not unlike Poananga,” suggested Lane, hiding a grin. “Perhaps they knew no better.”

“They know now,” said Wi, balancing on one foot. “May I learn boxing—soon?”

“Well,” said Lane, “but you mustn’t kill ’em all, Wi. You’re too strong for your years already.”

“To be strong is best of all things,” said Wi decidedly. And Lane laughed, half agreeing.

Providence had attend to the boy’s outward person with more elaboration than was absolutely necessary; and it is certain that Lane gloried as deep in the well-hung limbs and clean-shaped face and neck as in the spirit that he had handled with so much love until it stood up, unashamed and eager, and fearless with the childlike faith that is altogether Maori. Wi poised his body as no Englishman can or ever will do, and his lines, though fine and thoroughbred, already gave promise of enormous strength. It was in his strength that Wi took all the pride and delight of a young animal—and in his knowledge of woodcraft—and in the fortune which had given him two languages wherewith to scourge the boy who angered him.

But his temper was purely terrible at times; and when he sought to slay the Mindoorie cook with a sheath-knife, Lane flogged him until his arm fell limp, drawing blood before repentance. The repentance came at midnight; when Wi faced Lane where he smoked an uneasy pipe in the study, and told him in lordly words that he was forgiven. This, for the Maori blood in the boy. The white training showed next, and then Lane dressed the raw back with pitiful fingers, concurring in Wi’s suggestion that slit green-hide should not be used hereafter.

But Lane put no physical punishment on Wi again; for it is not possible to flog an elephant without dual loss of dignity, and very soon men began to fear Lane’s little brown boy because of his powerful body. The casual observer called him fat. But those who saw him stripped for fit on the football field knew, the meaning of the mighty knobs that swelled and shifted under the yellow jersey, and ran in following ripples down the brown shining limbs.

“You’ll have the fellow a prize-fighter ’fore all’s done,” warned Brazenose; but Lane took no heed, designing other ends for Wi.

Wi was to go into the House, and speak for the rights of his own people. He was to learn the worth of the soil which his own people had ceased to hold. He was to impress on them the need for sobriety, and for much besides, if they hoped to continue a factor in the land.

Wi knew all about it. And when his school-time was passed, he came down to Mindoorie to tell Lane that he could not do this thing.

It was hard to tell, and Wi came at it crudely, so that Lane sat up in the veranda chair, and looked with eyes that Wi had not seen before.

“Yes? You intend to set yourself against all that I have worked and planned for since you were six years old? This needs explanation, I think. Well?”

“Don’t put it like that,” said Wi, and choked.

“I will put it like that. Well?”

Then as Wi continued in silence. Lane turned on him fiercely. “What is it? Brazenose always said— Is it prize-fighting, or—a woman?”

This tickled Wi.

“Not either, exactly,” he said, chuckling gently. “It is—I want to go into the Church.”

“The Church!” Lane leaned back suddenly: . “The Church! Rubbish!”

“I must,” said Wi, his great hands gripping and ungripping. “A man needn’t be a softy because he preaches—can’t be, if he means to go among my folk. I’ve been thinking it over these two years, pater. And there are several reasons——”

“Yes?” Lane had himself in hand again. “We will have them, please.”

Wi lifted his shoulders as if he were fitting them to a load, and the spare grizzled man watched him unflinchingly.

The men were singing down at the wharès, and Cortiss’s gay shout led the way. Wi waited until the music had died in laughter. Then he said slowly:

“Speaking largely, you white men have taken away our beliefs, and not bothered much about giving us anything in exchange. And there is nothing messes up a race so much as want of religion. We don’t stick to our own codes of honor, and—so far—we have not assimilated yours. This is what will knock us out, body and soul, unless we can learn better. I have learned better, and I’m going to pass the knowledge on to my people.”

“Get some one else to do it,” said Lane. “Wi, you are a born speaker. I knew it when you first swore at me in the pa. You’d be much more use in Parliament.”

“The Native question is overhandled there already. They all want to roof in the house before the floor-plates are laid. I think I could lay some floor-plates,” said Wi, with grave sincerity. “You must let me serve my own people, pater. I belong to them.”

“You belong to me,” said Lane sharply.

“No.” The dark blood ran to Wi’s forehead. “I owe you everything—don’t think I forget that—but I was Maori before you took me.”

“Well?” Lane sighed impatiently. “You said there were several reasons?”

A weka was calling his mate from the flax in the paddock-creek. The notes were indescribably mournful, and Wi shivered as he answered.

“I am stronger than any man I have ever stripped to. I am stronger than any man I have ever seen, I think. And we Maori are not as you pakeha. Our passions have not had the centuries of repression. I have a very devil of a temper—you should know that—and it is so easy—” He ran his hand up his left forearm, and flung it out in explanation. Maoris make half their speech with their bodies.

“Ah,” said Lane, understanding that Wi feared himself. “And so you wish to make the Church your whipper-in? That is very noble of you, Wi.”

Wi made a quick step, and for just one moment Lane saw how the Maoris of old put terror into their enemies. It was not a nice sight at all.

The look died.

“You didn’t mean to hit quite so hard, pater. All right. No; I’m not seeing this as a coward. I didn’t think to have to tell you that.” Then his voice grew rougher, as if some great force drove it. “I cannot swing in a rata-loop always. I must choose the above or below. Already I have fought more desires than you ever will; and do you think I do not know the hearts of my people? We are a very noble race, but we can sin most fully on all counts that your religion forbids. Your faith is my faith; by training first, and now by choice. And my people are mine by blood. I think you will understand, perhaps—” He broke off abruptly, and his free light step beat out up the drive where the shadows were thickest.

A Maori can never be absolutely frank. He has too many generations that guarded life with the tongue behind him. But Wi gave to this white man more than the native generally gives, and Lane was not ungrateful.

To prove it, he sunk his own desires, making no parade, and sent Wi to a Maori Theological College that he might learn among men of his caste. Since Wi was to give his life to the brown man, it were better that he should not become too English.

Brazenose laughed when he heard of it.

“Wi will convert his hearers by force,” he said. “And he is morally certain to be chucked out before he is priested. He hasn’t an overgood record, and Nature never intended him for this kind of thing.”

“Don’t,” said Lane. “Wi makes me ashamed. He follows the God of our fathers with more reverence than nine-tenths of us do. You know how dead earnest a Maori is when he gets set on a thing? Wi is putting all his soul into this.”

“Bah! He’ll soon be sick of a student life.”

“Don’t you believe it,” said Lane; and his keen eyes softened, recalling a memory. “He took me to his own church last time I was up north. They hold the services both in Maori and English, and the students read the lessons. Wi read one—in Maori—and you know he’s got a voice like a bird on the tree. The sun came in just the same on the hideous gods they’ve got carved on the walls, and the white stone font, and the black bent heads. I tell you it made me feel—feel as I haven’t felt——”

“And that’s no argument at all,” said Brazenose irreverently. “Wi’s made a good many men feel as they haven’t felt—and a good many women, too, I don’t doubt.”

“Not to his knowledge, I think. And that bothers me sometimes. Wi will have to go lonely all his days. He’s not likely to look at a Maori, and he daren’t look at a white girl.”

Between the Maori man and the Maori woman there is all this difference. The woman may mate with a white man. For the Maori man there is nothing of this kind. No white woman weds with him, to the third generation. And he shapes his life accordingly, and has no desire that it should be otherwise. In his dignified soul he has toleration for the alien, and perhaps a little contempt.

But Wi had been bred to love an Englishman, and he had lived among pakeha until he had forgot this unwritten law. And it was so that the mischief fell.

Besides—and this fired temptation—the old woman who charred for the house-master spoke no more than the voice of the town when she said, “It’s a strong body takes a woman more’n looks, and he’s got both, wi’ a cunning tongue added. You take it from me, Mrs. Blayne, he’s the boy for the gels.”

“An’ fur more than the gels,” said Mrs. Blayne over her teacup; and the other chuckled comfortably.

“Well, listen now. I seed ’em go by this mornin’—him an’ the little Eru chap—when I was a-carr’in’ water fur the bilers. ‘Hillo, old lady,’ says he. ‘Gimme that bucket till I put it up the steps fur yer.’ ‘Yer might put meself up too,’ says I, chaffin’, ‘seein’ as there’s ten on ’em.’ An’ as I’m a livin’ soul, he picks me up immediate like I was a skein o’ pack-thread, an’ dumps me on the veranda wi’ the bucket. An’ me no fairy neither.”

Mrs. Blayne agreed without reservation.

“Must ha’ the strength of a elegant,” she said.

“An’ the reach of it, too, barrin’ the trunk. I thought I stud six fut from him. ‘What’ll yer want fur payment?’ says I, gigglin’ an’ gaspin’. ‘Jest this,’ says he, an’ kisses me fair on the mouth. Then they goes off laughin’, him swingin’ head an’ shoulders above Eru. And I didn’t wipe off that kiss.”

The college students did their own work, and Henare Poihewa, whose father was so great a chief that his real name could never be mentioned, thought it no shame to scrub out his cubicle twice a week.

It was this same Henare who went with Wi the first night that he met the Little White Girl. There were other girls in the room, but none so white and so small. Wi could have broken her between his palm and three fingers, and this made him feel clumsy for the first time in his life. But he sang to her instead—sang the strange Maori chants that have no scored music, and that tug at the heart-strings of the pakeha and hurt him, because he knows that he is forever outside the mystical, unexplainable power that begets them. And it happened that he made the Little White Girl cry—stealthily, behind her hand, that none might see. But Wi saw; and he went home treading on air, to find relief in wiping the floor with Rau Wilson, who had annexed his blanket.

In the next months Wi saw the Little White Girl weekly—at picnics, and at all other places where it is possible for two people to talk apart from the eyes and ears of all the world. The Little White Girl said openly that Wi was quite adorable; and Wi in innocent sincerity, began to desire her for his very own. And now would have entered the element of danger if Wi had not been training his spirit for higher things. For the savage overword is might, and the Little White Girl did not know it.

Then it grew near to the time when Wi must take his deacon’s orders; and Lane, setting things in careful train that he might go up and see it done, had his world struck away beneath him by a frantic letter from the Principal. It implied that Wi was possessed of madness and many devils, and implored Lane to come straightway.

Lane went that night. There was a heavy sea outside the Heads, and the boat labored like a tortured soul. But she could not have known anything about the torture of Lane’s soul.

It was because he understood so much of that part of the Maori which cannot be tabulated that Lane was afraid. When such as Wi give up the game, it is better to forget that they were once true men. For the memory will be painful. Wi had cleansed himself for his work in all faithfulness and honesty, but—Lane shivered, tramping the wet deck. He knew the savage drop in the blood which nothing could purge. Yet it does not poison the veins of more than one man in three hundred.

The Principal was upset, and much annoyed with Wi. Brazenose, when the thing became public, said that he did not wonder. It appeared that Wi had come in one night, and comprehensively cursed the College—all that it contained, all that it said, did, and was. He had then thrown Ware Taureka, who attempted to hold him, and put out his shoulder; and when finally overpowered by numbers, had surged into slow-dropping Maori, which—to judge by the faces of his companions, the Principal himself being a literary scholar exclusively—was unfit for the ears of divinity students, or any one else.

Lane remembered the little brown boy who had railed at him in the pa; and he remembered all the patient years that had gone between.

“Where is he? I want to see him—now.”

“He is confined to a small room over the stair, pending a reply from the Bishop. His expulsion will, of course, be necessary—his public expulsion. We must do what we can to ameliorate the effects of this disgraceful affair. Not that I am alarmed for the others. They are good, steady lads——”

“Will you kindly allow me to see him at once?” asked Lane in a desperation that shook him as the Principal took him up the narrow uncarpeted stairs that Wi’s feet had helped to hollow.

“He will give no reasons to any one,” said the Principal, fitting the key in the lock. “He is absolutely sullen and uncaring.”

Lane nodded. If Wi had not been uncaring he would long since have broken in the door that stood between him and liberty.

“I will see him alone,” he said. “No, I am not afraid. Wi will not hurt me. Did you forget that he is my adopted son?”

Then the Principal muttered something about being sorry, and went away, leaving the grate of a lock behind him, and the silence of the two in the room.

Wi turned round. He was thinner than when Lane had last seen him; but that might be the result of closer study. His manner was courteous and easy as ever, and his handshake firm. But behind the big dark eyes there was a something shut down. The one was a native; the other the white of a usurping race. Lane felt it, as Wi intended that he should.

“What is it, Wi?” asked Lane simply, and put a hand on the broad shoulder.

Wi stood without speech or movement.

“Did you know how you had crumpled that fellow up?” said Lane. “The cross throw, was it? Must have been a plucky man to stand up to you.”

The child-side purred under the praise.

“He hadn’t a hope. None of them had a hope if they’d come singly. But they spilt on me like shingle from a tip-dray.” He swelled aside. “Won’t you sit down? I’ve only a bed, and it creaks——”

“You’re looking a bit off color, Wi.” Lane was feeling his way carefully, for the Maori mind has many windings, and no white man may hope to hold the clue. But this seared a raw place somewhere, and Wi spoke thickly.

“Off color! I can never be off color. Not when I am dying—not when I’m dead. Look at my hands.”

He held them out with the quick grace that never allowed his bulk to be clumsy, and Lane stared at them, puzzled, seeing nothing new.

He had always known that Wi was dark among his kind. For where the sun touched him he was purplish-brown; he bruised ink-blackly, and his finger-nails were burnt-sienna.

“Don’t be an owl,” very sharply. “What does that matter?”

“I can never be white, can I? Prayers can’t make me white. I’ve tried—I’ve tried. My body is black, and my soul is therefore black. That is what you pakeha think. That is what you think, oh, hunga mohio.”

He was wild with a passion that made his young face terrible. But his will took command as Lane cried:

“Wi—for God’s sake——”

“Keep your white God for speech with white people. He is the pakeha God. Ia tuku! He is not mine. I have served Him—your God—and His tamariki laugh at me. Aue! Naku ano i mea, i he ai ahau. But I will not any more. Keep your white God, for He is nothing to the Maori.”

“This is blasphemy, Wi. Are you mad?”

But to Lane the slow, incisive voice was more hopelessly awful than any madness which runs all ways.

“Ka te noa,” said Wi, without interest, and squatted on the floor. “Are you going?”

Lane cast his eyes round the bare room in search of some weapon to drive home. A psalm-book of Wi’s lay on the floor, brought up, probably, by Henare. It had been dog-eared, and well loved once. It was desecrated shreds now, ground underfoot. Lane looked from it to Wi, sitting still and stolid. The attitude was comically suggestive, but Lane was not seeing fun just then. Wi was pakeha no more. That was all it told him.

“Wi,” he said, and went to him. “Because I have been father to you all these years, tell me what has happen. Tell me, dear old chap.”

Wi stood up; and it was his breaking voice in the little dark room that came back to trouble Lane in lonely evenings on Mindoorie.

“How can I believe your Bible that does not speak truth? It calls all men equal. Then am I not a man? Yet am I like a man, though some say I am liker a bullock. But if the pakeha is not for the Maori, then is the pakeha’s religion not for the Maori. Thy God shall be thy God, and thy God only. And thy maidens shall be thine, and thine only. It is quite plain. Oh, most truthfully does the white man call the brown his brother!”

“The Little White Girl,” thought Lane; and under his breath he did not wish her well. “Just so, Wi. You are not a man. You are a child that cries and beats the earth because it is not smooth as a passion-fruit rind.”

“No,” said Wi; and the something behind his eyes was lifted that Lane might understand quite fully. “A man is a coward who cannot stand up under sorrow. I am not a coward. It is because I did not see before. I am strong, but that has no hold against things that are not of the flesh. How can that be given with the one hand which is taken away with the other? The Maori is not fit to love the tamaiti—the child of your God? Then is he not fit to love your God. That is all. I have learned it. I will not forget.”

“And all this because a white girl has played with you,” said Lane.

Wi sprang with a snarl, swung the other man up, and Lane looked to have his head rammed between his shoulders against the wall. But he came again to his feet unhurt, and Wi stood still. It was a mightier self-control than Lane had seen in a man before.

“I beg your pardon most earnestly, Wi,” he said.

“Do you riot see”—Wi paid out his words as if each gave him separate pain—“that this is the foreword of all? The white and the black are meant to be two peoples forever. And your faith teaches that they are one. Then is your faith false that I have loved. There is no future for the Maori. He has sloughed his religion, and that of the pakeha is not for him. What shall I go into the pas and kiangas to teach my people?”

It was the white training that drove Wi to give explanation where he honestly believed explanation to be due. But the spirit shaping this was not within Lane’s comprehension. Only he saw that trouble had been averted for the Little White Girl in exactly inverse ratio to the payment given by the man.

“But that is not the law of God,” he said. “It is mere outward observance. Can’t you believe——”

“No, I cannot believe. This has eaten into me until it has eaten all belief away. I will go to my own gods. They are many, and I can cut new ones out of wood if I like. But I think that I will not believe them either.”

Lane had thought to tell Wi fearfully of the disgrace that awaited him. Very nearly, he laughed to remember. When a man has lost his hold on eternity he does not regard the wrath of his kind.

A Maori is generally dignified—even in European clothes. The tragedy of a dying race was in Wi just then. Lane watched the impassive dark face where the light from the little window touched it, and his voice was broken.

“What will you do, then?”

Wi lifted his shoulders. It was a curious trick he had sometimes, as if a weight bowed him.

“There will be fuss here first, I suppose. They will talk, and talk again; and the Head will call me evil names. But he does not know all I called him that he had taught me lies for so long. The boys know. Ware laughed. He said I was drunk. That is why I would have killed him. And then I will go away. Anyway, it does not matter. And I will sit in the sun, and smoke, and drink brandy. And if Ware comes again to tell me that I am drunk, I will pull him in half. In our creed there is no punishment after death. So perhaps this is better.”

“And have you forgotten me?”

There was a quick movement from the window. But it stilled again.

“No, I have not forgotten you. I think I should have been angry once if it had been said that I should leave you. But it does not matter now. I will not live with you again. The pakeha has cheated my trust through all these years. He has given his Bible and withheld the application. I have not forgotten that either. No; I go to my own gods.” Then, as in the old days, his eyes were shot with the craftiness of the savage. This was inevitable when you remember all that had gone before. But it made Lane heart-sick to see it come.

“That was a game you played with me, oh, atawhai pakeha; and it has hurt. But I shall sit in the sun and drink brandy, for I have no care to live. I know too much, and I am too little. And all white men are liars. This is the ending.”

And Lane went out.