Ngaio Marsh - Color Scheme

“This is abominable,” said Gaunt. “The whole place works secretly. It’s alive.”

“Look to your right,” said Dikon. They had come to a hillock; the path divided, and, where it turned to the right, was marked by red flags.

“They told me you used to be able to walk along there,” Dikon explained, “but it’s not safe now. Taupo-tapu is encroaching.”

They followed the white flags, climbed steeply, and at last, from the top of the hillock, looked down on Taupo-tapu.

It was perhaps fifteen feet across, dun-coloured and glistening, a working ulcer in the body of the earth. Great bubbles of mud formed themselves deliberately, swelled, and broke with the sounds which they had noticed a few minutes before and which were now loud and insistent. With each eruption unctuous rings momentarily creased the surface of the brew. It was impossible to escape the notion that Taupo-tapu had some idiotic purpose of its own.

For perhaps two minutes Gaunt looked at it in silence. “Quite obscene, isn’t it?” he said at last. “If you know anything about it, don’t tell me.”

“The only story I’ve heard,” Dikon said, “is not a pretty one. I won’t.”

Gaunt’s reply was unexpected. “I should prefer to hear it from a Maori,” he said.

“You can see where the thing has eaten into the old path,” Dikon pointed out. “The red flags begin again on the other side and rejoin our track just below us. Just as well. It would be an unpleasant error to mistake the paths, wouldn’t it?”

“Don’t, for God’s sake,” said Gaunt. “It’s getting dark. Let’s go home.”

When they turned back, Dikon found that he had to make a deliberate effort to prevent himself from hurrying, and he thought he sensed Gaunt’s impatience too. The firm dry earth felt wholesome under their feet as once more they circled the hill. Behind them, in the native village, a drift of song rose on the cool air, intolerably plaintive and lonely.

“What’s that?”

“One of their songs,” said Dikon. “Perhaps they’re rehearsing for your concert. It’s the genuine thing. You get the authentic music up here.”

The shoulder of the hill came between them and the song. It was almost dark as they walked along the brushwood fence towards Wai-ata-tapu. Steam from the hot pools drifted in wraiths across the still night air. It was only when she moved forward that Barbara’s dress and the blurred patches of white that were her arms and face told them that she had been waiting for them. Perhaps the darkness gave her courage and balance. Perhaps any voice would have been welcome just then, but it seemed to Dikon that Barbara’s had a directness and repose that he had not heard in it before.

“I hope I didn’t startle you,” she said. “I heard you coming down the path and thought I should like to speak to you.”

Gaunt said: “What is it, Miss Claire? More excursions and alarms?”

“No, no. We seem to have settled down again. It’s only that I wanted to tell you how very sorry we all are about that frightful scene. We shan’t go on apologizing, but I did just want to say this: Please don’t think you are under an obligation to stay. Of course you know you are not, but perhaps you feel it’s rather difficult to tell us you are going. Don’t hesitate. We shall quite understand.”

She turned her head and they saw her in profile against a shifting background of steam. The dusk, simplifying her ugly dress, revealed the beauty of her silhouette. The profile lines of her head and throat were well-drawn, delicate, and harmonious. It was an astonishing change. Perhaps if Gaunt had not seen her so translated, his voice would have held less warmth and friendliness when he answered her.

“But there is no question of our going,” he said. “We have not thought of it. As for the scene, Dikon will tell you that I have a lust for scenes. We are very sorry if you’re in difficulties, but we don’t in the least want to go.”

Dikon saw him take her arm and turn her towards the house. It was a gesture he often used on the stage, adroit and impersonal. Dikon followed behind as they walked across the pumice.

“It’s awfully nice of you,” Barbara was saying. “I — we have felt so frightful about it. I was horrified when I heard what Mr. Questing had done, badgering you to come. We didn’t know what he was up to. Uncle James and I were horrified.”

“He didn’t badger me,” said Gaunt. “Dikon attended to Questing. That’s why I keep him.”

“Oh.” Barbara half-turned her head and laughed, not with her usual boisterousness, but shyly. “I wondered what he was for,” she said.

“He has his uses. When I start work again he’ll be kept very spry.”

“You’re going to write, aren’t you? Uncle James told me. Is it an autobiography? I do hope it is.”

Gaunt moved his hand above her elbow. “And why do you hope that?”

“Because I want to read it. You see, I’ve seen your Rochester, and once somebody who was staying here had an American magazine, I think it was called the Theatre Arts , and there was an article in it with photographs of you as different people. I liked the Hamlet one the best because — ”

“Well?” asked Gaunt when she paused.

Barbara stumbled over her next speech. “Because — well, I suppose because I know it best. No, that’s not really why. I didn’t know it at all well until then, but I read it again, lots of times, and tried to imagine how you sounded when you said the speech in the photograph. Of course after hearing Mr. Rochester it was easier.”

“Which photograph was that, Dikon?” asked Gaunt over his shoulder.

“It was with Rosencrantz…” Barbara began eagerly.

“Ah, I remember.”

Gaunt stood still and put her from him, holding her by the shoulder as he had held the gratified small-part actor who played Rosencrantz in New York. Dikon heard him draw in his breath as he always did when he collected himself to rehearse. In the silence of that warm evening amidst the reek of sulphur and against the nebulous thermal background, the beautiful voice spoke quietly: —

“ ‘ O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. ’ ”

Dikon was irritated and disturbed by Barbara’s rapturous silence, and infuriated by the whispered “Thank you” with which she finally ended it. “She’s making a perfect little ass of herself,” he thought, but he knew that Gaunt would not find her attitude excessive. He had an infinite capacity for absorbing adulation.

“Can you go on?” Gaunt was saying. “ Which dreams — ”

“ ‘ Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. ’ ”

“ ‘A dream itself is but a shadow !’ Do you hear this, Dikon?” cried Gaunt. “She knows the lines.” He moved forward again, Barbara at his side. “You’ve got a voice, my child,” he said. “How have you escaped the accent? Do you know what you’ve been talking about? You must hear the music, but you must also achieve the meaning. Say it again: thinking — ‘ Which dreams indeed are ambition ? ” But Barbara fumbled the second time, and they spoke the line backwards and forwards to each other as they crossed the pumice to the house. Gaunt was treating her to an almost indecent helping of charm, Dikon considered.

The lights were up in the house and Mrs. Claire was hurriedly doing the blackout. She had left the door open and a square of warmth reached across the verandah to the pumice. Before they came to its margin Gaunt checked Barbara again.

“We say good night here,” he said. “The dusk becomes you well. Good night, Miss Claire.”