URANIA TE MOANANUI.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIX, Issue 11580, 16 May 1898, Page 2

URANIA TE MOANANUI.

. [By William W. Caelile.] (The Aust-alaHun Pas'ornliets' Review.) Society in London was startled one morning in the later sixties to learn that Henry Newmarch, the rising barrister and recentlyelected M.P. for North Lexington, had died the day previous of inflammation of the lungs. A vigorous, burly man, hardly past the prime of life, he hade fair to outlive the most of us; and, since his conduct of the case for the Crown in Regina v. Gethin, about throe years before, those in the know in such matters reckoned it safe to back him foi the Attorney-Generalship, and eventually perhaps for the woolsack. When people began to speculate as to how he would cut up, the general opinion was that at any rate his widow, his girls and his only son, would be well provided for, as his income had of late years, at least, been an ample one;. The event, however ,turned out otherwise. The acutest' lawyer may be trusted to blunder legally where his own private affairs arc concerned, and Mr Newmarch had made the big blunder of allowing his name to appear as'a trustee for a sister-in-law on the share register of an unlimited bank, io Ills amazement, he' found himself personally responsible for an amount that swallowed up all his accumulated savings. He had since niaae such provision as he could for contingencies by insuring his life; and the life assurance money, some £SOOO altogether, was now ail that his family had to fall back upon. Mrs Newmarch and the girls—there were four of them in all —decided on living quietly in Lausanne, and Jack, who was with an army crammer at Tunbridge, had to set about to consider the problem how or in what part of the world a young fellow of high spirit and sound in wind and limb, but with little aptitude for book learning, could carve out a career for himself. Among the old friends of his father whom he cmisidted was a woolbroker, who had a large New Zealand connection, and this gentleman gave him a letter of introduction to Mr Vereker, ot Halidon Hill station, in the North Wellington district of New Zealand, where Jack arrived in due course.

Vereker’s father had been a draper in Manchester ; he was a man who always had a good,many irons in the fire; among other things it is probably the case that ho had had some connection with a big butchery concern at Salford. The Vereker of our history left Manchester with a good round sum in his pocket, and he hit tilings in New Zealand just in the nick of time. A Radical Provincial Government had got into power in Wellington, and the first step they took was, as they said, to bring the land within the reach of .everybody. They brought even the best land accordingly down to 5s per aero. Vereker took as much of it as he could get, and as everyone else did the same there was soon no land similar to be bought in the district under eight times the money. He sold half his property for £40,000, put a manager to look after the rest, and went Home, fired with the ambition of getting into Belgravian society. It is to be done by pretty well any one with money enough, they say, if one knows how to do it, but Vereker did not go the right way about it. He took a big house at Hyde Park Corner, made the acquaintance of some sporting swells to whom he lost bis money freely, but who did not, for all that, bring their wives to call on Mrs Vereker. Indeed ,some of Ins experiences in that connection were decidedly ttagic. In the end he decided on giving up London and going back to New Zealand, where, at any rate ,he was somebody, and on showing the natives there how an earl or a duke might comport himself if his lot happened to be cast in the Antipodes. Jack Newmarch’s appearance evidently impressed the myrmidons of Halidon Hill, as well it might. A fine young fellow he was, with everything about him, from his hat to his stirrup irons, in the latest London style. Anyhow, before he well knew what was happening, he found himself sitting down to lunch , with Mr Vereker and his family, and being treated evidently as a guest of some distinction. It was not till after lunch was over and the cigars had been lit that he screwed himself up to explain what was the object of his visit —that, in fact, he had come to look for a job. The communication gave that gentleman’s nerves a shock. Such communications, he intimated should always be made to the manager, and even suggested that for anyofte making them it would be more, appropriate to approach the premises by the back door. However, as the matter ended with Jack’s being taken on to keep the station books and make, himself useful generally, he was able to reflect that it was a bit of luck to have got. into harness at all, and not to require to draw any more on his mother’s scanty resources. He stopped at Halidon Hill a couple of months. Existence there was not without its drawbacks, rle saw no more of Mrs Vereker or the family, but dined in his own room. •• Take my horse down to the paddock, Newmarch,” Vereker would say when he came home in the evening, and Jack did it with the best grace he could ; but when it came to “ You’ll and my boots upstairs, Newmarch,” the worm turned.. “Hang it all,” he said, “Mr Vereker, you kuow there are some things a fellow can’t do, vou know.” “ Ah,” said Vereker, “ really, Then 111 manage to dispense with your services." So Jack, sick and sore at heart, put such of his belongings as ho could take with him on his saddle and started olf on the road for Wellington. “ You need not say anything to anyone as to the cause of our parting,” said Yereker, as Jack was leaving, It dimly occuired to him—“ Here’ll be another anecdote for those fellows at the club. In spite of his immense vanity the suspicion now and then crossed his mind that his doings were a source of more amusement than admiration to his neighbours. “It isn’t very likely, Mr Vereker, said Jack as he rode away.

He ha.d hardly reached the outer gate when , he met Mr Buxton, the owner of the neighbouring elation of Groonvale. Buxton had made h' acquaintance at the last drafting. “ Smart lad that,’’ he observed to his manager as he saw how Jack shaped in the drafting alley. Strange and incredible as it may seem, the race with a gate at the end of it was a device unknown in New Zealand in those days. Buxton glanced at the saddle with the swag on it, and in spite of the air of unconcern that Jack endeavoured, with little success, to assume, saw that there was something wrong. He soon heard Jack’s story. **The little beast,” he said, “ wanted you to fetch his boots, did he ? ” From the gusto with which Buxton listened to the narrative it was pretty evident that “ Vereker’s latest ” would soon be widely disseminated. “ Never mind, said lie in the end. p “ There’s no good your going off to Welling- 0 ton to spend your money and have to sponge p on the old woman. Come home with me. 1>• I’ll give you a Job." ! h Here was a turn in tne tide, anyhow, j s - Jack’s luck had not altogether deserted , p him. | n Buxton was -.me of the pioneers of the ; p settlement, and knew all about everybody; : n and, sitting over a glass of grog in the even- 1 p ing, after the ladies had gone to bed, Jack J a heard a good deal that, whether it was all i v accurate or not, was at any rate entertain- jj ing. ! o “ People think Vereker’s roffing in vicnes, \ 5 hut look there,” Buxton added, handing : p Jack a “ Mercantile Gazette ” with notices | p of stock mortgages in it. “ A fellow who j ‘ is rolling in riches doesn’t have to put his I “ name to a document like that. Awful extra vagarit woman his wife is. However, he | j and some half-dozen more of them have a j big thing on just now, and if they pull it , u through they’ll make a mint of money. | They’re after a native block called the Roto- | v whenua, just this side of the hills, where t the railway will come out into tne valley p and where there’ll be a great inland town i some day as sure as the Lord maae little apples; splendid farming land, too, every f bit of it. They have got about luree-fourths ■ I of the signatures of the native owners now | 1: to an agreement to sell, and if they get the ; t rest as easy as they got wem it will be a ; 1 proper chuck-in for them. The trouble is, 1 g though, that maybe one fellow will stick out p after all the rest have come to terms, and , f hi the end you’ll have to give him more | ■ than you had to give all the rest put to- | 11 ge.thcr. They have got old Tareha in this j block, and he’s a hard nut for any of them to crack.” j , The ladies have been alluded to in pass- j 11 ing. There were, besides Mrs Buxton, a! 11 kindly motherly woman of fifty, a couple ■ ® of school girls home from their holidays. I Rather, it should be said, one of them, Mary i _ Buxton, was still a school girl. Her friend, | ” Nelly Summerfield, had just been turned cut I as finished. g Nelly’s father, as Jack had heard from Buxton, had come out in the very early days. a Indeed, he was in North Wellington before anyone else was. He was a man of great j ability and of high culture —took his first at Oxford, sc the legend ran, probably with j some exaggeration. Why he came out no one • j. knew, but that there was a woman in the j cruse was the universally accepted explana- j tion. At any rate, he was not the sort of , man to make much money for himself, and he had not made much. His good word, r however, went further with the Maoris in c the early days than anyone else’s, and to r his good offices most of the pioneer settlers, <n Buxton himself among the number, were in- g del)red for such success as they had met with. Summerfield’s wife—both he and she c were now dead —had been a native woman ; t of illustrious pedigree. The first intention, ; \ of the natives with reference to him had j t been to make use of him for culinary pur- i i poses, He found favour, however, with the : graceful and high-bom Katarina. She ; s spread a mat over him and then no one n durst touch him. He was hers thencefor- t ward, and a faithful, unselfish, and devoted j wile she became to him for thirty long years. 1 If he had not been able to leave his daughter wealthy, he, at any rate, had taken care J that nothing should be wanting that scnqpls and governesses could do for her to give 1 her the education and the accomplishments 1 becoming an English girl of the better class. From the moment that Jack set eyes upon her, it is useless to deny it, his bead was fairly turned. Everything about her was so natural, so unconscious, so unconventional. The soft, gazelle-like, Polynesian eyes, the Polynesian grace of prose and motion, combined with the gentle modesty of the Eng- . lisli maiden, completely captured his fancy. ; She could play the.piano rather brilliantly, I and his voice was a pleasant baritone. They j were practising one evening - “ The Place | ' Where the Old Horse Died.” Buxton was ,i asleep, Mrs Buxton busy with household > : affairs, and Mary at her lessons. As he • bent ever her to turn the leaves of the music, he could not help thinking how lovely it would be to stroke those silky tresses. Sad to relate, ho did it too, and unrebuked. The girl trembled, slightly as she glanced shyly up at him. With, her, too, the elective affinity had begun to work. The courtship of eighteen and twentytwo, when health is splendid and spirits are high, and life is all aglow with colour, is liable to partake, more or less, of the nature j of a romp. The girls set cunningly-devised j booby-traps - above Jack’s door, reefed his blankets, put holly in his bed, and he repaid them in kind when he got the chance. It was nothing but harmless fun, no doubt, when Nelly seized his hat as he was going off in the morning, and disappeared with it, down the slope, among the lilacs and laburnums. Perhaps hardly so harmless j when, as he drew her close to him in his efforts to regain the headpiece, there was a | whispered “ Nelly, my own, my darling, ■ my sweet,” and from her a softly murmured i “ jack, you mustn’t; you know vou should- j n’t.” _ j At any rate, the flirtation began to cause Mrs Buxton some anxiety. I ■' It’s all very well for young Newmarch, she said, “ to* amuse himself, but the girl may go away with a heartache." Buxton accordingly took the first chance of saying to Jack as kindly as he could | “This flirtation between you and Nelly, my ; boy, is a bit of a worry to the Missus. I think I’ll have to ask you to drop it.” “ But, Mr Buxton,” said Jack, ” we’re engaged.” . , “Engaged, are you? Well, if you dont mind—.” He was gping to say the touch of the tar brush, out checked himself in time. “ She’s an uncommonly fine girl, anyhow. By jingo, if I was a young fellow, and single, you wouldn’t have the field all to yourself, j A pity the old man let everything slip ; through his fingers the way he did. How- | ever, she must have a thousand or two, any- | how ; and that’s as much as most of us had j to begin life upon here.” . Mrs Buxton was delighted at the turn I things had taken. It was in every respect satisfactory thfCb her young friend, who had seemed to be left lather alone in the world, should have found a husband so much to her mind. There was no reason for putting off the marriage, and every reason against unnecessary expense. So the young people elected to drive into Wellington, see the Registrar, and get the business over in that way. Having got it over, they came back, : for the present, to Greenvale, and things ; went on to all appearance, the same as be- ; fore. Thus it happened that the country side knew nothing about it till it had been for some weeks an accomplished fact. A day or two after their return an English s letter came, with a deep black edge, ad- ; dressed, “ Sir John Newmarch.” His cousin, i it appeared, a young man about his own age, ■ had just blown his brains out at Monte Carlo. Not so much wonder either when, as it i turned out, his rent-roll, already reduced , beyond ail anticipation by the agricultural depression, was completely swallowed by I charges in favour of his lady relatives. , “ Blow such a title,” said Jack, “ much ; good it will do a fellow when he has to go s j out into the hack blocks to make a liv-

mg. Nelly’s eyes brightened, however, at the news. To her, her husband appeared as nothing else but a prince" iiTdisguise. Meanwhile, Buxton, too, had been in town, and had come back with all the news about everything that was afoot. Vereker and his friends, ; t appeared, had a perfect army of native agents and interpreters moving heaven and earth to get the signatures of the remaining owners of Rotowhenua. There was great indignation in town about the business. The Government, it was

thought, should havfe bought the land and opened it up for settlement. “ VVUat . was their member thinking about, they asked, " that he let such a thing pass without making a noise about it. He was always the ■, staunchest of radicals. His whole stock-in-trade, indeed, as a politician, had been denunciation of the squatters for mopping up the land, native or Crown land as the case might he.” Presently it was reported that there was a very good reason why that wideawake gentleman had held his .tongue —he was in the swim himself. The fact of their having him in with them was a great element of strength in the position of the purchasers. Meanwhile, also, old Tareha Te Moananui, the one native owner who was likely to give them much trouble, was on his deathbed. “ His heir, they say,” remarked Buxton, “is quite a young girl, named Urania.” “ Why! lam Urania Te Moananui,” said Nelly. They all stared and gasped in sheer amazement. _ “My mother •va.sTareha’s sister,’ she vent on. “Me cake a name by native custom from the mother’s side, and by English law from the father’s. ’ “ Why, hang it then, Jack,” said Buxton, “ you and Nellie have got those Rotowhenua fellows by the wool properly, and not Rotowhenua only; Tareha’s name is in a lot of blocks. Among others, it is in that land that Vereker has at the back of his freehold, the only land that he is doing any good out of now. Why, your wile is his principal landlord. I wouldn’t take £60,000 for veur chances ; hanged if I think 1 d take £IOO,OOO. You’ll see" Vereker or some of his agents will be along presently to try and make terms with Nelly.” Buxton was not far out. In the afternoon Vereker. p>-.rented himself. “ Lose no time,” his lawyer had advised him, “the girl is a minor, and, of course, she cannot hind herself definitely; still she may commit herself to something that she won’t hack out of afterwards. If you leave her till she has con suited her frUnds, there is no raying to what extent we shall be bled—” he was one of the syndicate himself. “ Better see her yourself/’ he added, “ don’t leave it to an agent. Vereker was shown into the brawing-room, and asked for miss ioummerfieid. Jack answered the summons. “ Lady Newmarch,” lie said, “asks me ” “ Lady Newmarch,” queried Vereker, looking as if lie thought Jack was off his head, “ Yes,” continued the latter, with the blandness of a heathen Chinaman, “ the lady that you knew as Miss Summerfield. bine asks me to say that if your business is connected with the Rotowhenua block or any other land, she must request you to communicate with her solicitors, Messrs Synnot and Redfern. She has given them full instructions.” When Mr Vereker had sufficiently recovered from his astonishment to collect his thoughts, ha began to find that he had some very" delightful reminiscences of the hospitality that had been shown him by the Newmarchcs when he was in London, anci asked almost affectionately after Mrs Newmarch, senr., and the young ladies. The two gcntlc,men spent about live minutes in making themselves agreeable to each other, and then Mr Vereker "took his departure. His visit had. been a short, if not a sweet one. Nelly was the “ fair Polynesian ” over whom’there was such a furore in London last season. I never heard that the syndicate made much out of the Rotowhenua block when everybody had been settled up with.