“If you think I’m idiotic,” said Barbara loudly, “I wonder you bother to mix yourself up in our affairs at all.” And she added childishly in a trembling voice: “Anyway it’s quite obvious that you think I’m hopeless.”
“If you want to know what I think about you,” Dikon said furiously, “I think you deliberately make the worst of yourself. If you didn’t pull faces like a clown and do silly things with your voice you’d be remarkably attractive.”
“Good Lord, that’s absolutely impertinent!” cried Barbara, stung to anger. “How dare you,” she added, “how dare you speak about me like that!”
“You asked for an honest opinion…”
“I didn’t. So you’ve no business to give it.” As this statement was true Dikon made no attempt to counter it. “I’m uncouth and crude and I irritate you,” Barbara continued.
“Then stop talking!” Dikon shouted. He did not mean to kiss her, he was telling himself. He had not even thought of doing so. It was by some compulsion that it happened, some chance touch upon an emotional reflex. Having begun, there seemed to be no reason why he should stop, though an onlooker in his brain was saying quite distinctly; “This is a pretty kettle of fish.”
“You beast!” Barbara muttered. “Beast. Beast!”
“Hold your tongue.”
“Bar-bie!” called Mrs. Claire. “Where are you?”
“Here!” shouted Barbara at the top of her voice.
By the time Mrs. Claire came up to them Barbara was out of the car.
“Thank you, dear,” said her mother. “You needn’t have moved. I’m so sorry I was such a long time. Mr. Falls has been looking for Edward but I’m afraid he’s gone.” She got in beside Dikon. “I don’t think we need wait. Jump in, dear, we mustn’t keep Mr. Bell any longer.”
Barbara’s hand was on the door and Dikon had reached out towards the self-starter. They were arrested by a cry which, though it endured for no longer than two seconds, filled the night so shockingly that it hung on the air as a sensation after it had ceased to be a sound.
An observer would have seen in the half-light that their faces were all turned in one direction as if their heads had been jerked by a wire. On the silence that followed upon the scream there came again the monstrously domestic noise of a boiling pot.
Chapter IX
Mr. Questing Goes down for the Third Time
They were not alone for more than two minutes. A subdued hubbub had broken out in the village around them. Doors were opened and slammed. A woman’s voice. — was it Mrs. Te Papa’s? — was raised in a long wail.
“What,” asked Mrs. Claire steadily, “was that dreadful noise?”
They began to protect themselves with improbabilities. It was the small boys trying to frighten them. It was someone repeating the death cry of the girl in the song. The last suggestion came from Dikon, and as soon as he had made it he felt its reflection in his hearers.
“Will you wait here by the car?” he said. “I’d better go and see if anyone’s in trouble out there.” He moved his hand towards the pools. The open space before the meeting-house was filled with shadowy forms. The woman broke out again into a wail. Other voices joined hers: “Aue! Aue! Taukiri e!” Rua spoke authoritatively out of the darkness and the wailing stopped.
“Get into the car, Barbara, and wait,” said Dikon.
“You mustn’t go out there by yourself.”
“I’ve got a torch in the car. In the rack above your head, Mrs Claire. May I have it?” Mrs. Claire gave it to him.
“Not by yourself,” said Barbara. “I’m coming too.”
“Please stay here. It’s probably nothing at all, but I’d better look.”
“Stay here, dear,” said Mrs. Claire. “Keep to the white flags, Mr. Bell, won’t you?”
Dikon called into the darkness: “Mr. Te Kahu! What’s wrong?”
“Who is that?” Rua’s voice held a note of surprise. “I know of nothing that is wrong. Someone has cried out. Where are you?”
Mrs. Claire put her head out of the car window. “Here we are, Rua.”
Dikon switched on his torch, shouted that he was going to the thermal reserve, and set out.
The village was surrounded by a manuka fence. The only path across the thermal region started at a gap in this fence and Dikon found his way there easily enough. He could hear the pools working. The reek of sulphur grew stronger as he moved towards the gap. He felt and dimly saw wraiths of steam. When he put his hand to his face he found it was damp with condensed vapour. Now he was outside the hedge, his torch-light found the white flags. He followed them. The ground beneath his feet quivered. Alongside the path a mud pot no bigger than a saucepan worked industriously, forming ringed bosses that swelled and broke interminably. But to his left an unseen vent hissed. He caught sight of a steaming pool. The path mounted and then encompassed the mound of an old geyser. A mass of whitish-grey sinter rose up in front of Dikon and his path veered sharply to the right.
He had felt himself to be very much alone and was startled to see the figure of a man, clearly silhouetted against a pale background of sinter. At first Dikon thought this man stood with his back towards him but as he moved forward he discovered that they were face to face. The man’s head was bent forward. Some trick of shadow, or perhaps of Dikon’s nerves, suggested that the stranger had turned sharply and now stood ready to defend himself. So vivid was this impression that Dikon halted.
“Who’s that?” he said loudly.
“I was about to ask you the same question,” said Mr. Septimus Falls. “I see now that it is Mr. Bell. I thought you were to drive back to the Springs.”
“We heard someone scream.”
“Yes?”
“It seemed to be in this direction. Has anything happened?”
“I have seen nothing.”
“But you must have heard it.”
“One could scarcely escape hearing it.”
“What are you doing here?” Dikon asked.
“I came to look for Colonel Claire.”
“Where is he?”
“As I have explained, I have seen nobody. I hope he has reached the hill and gone home.”
Dikon looked across to where the hill that separated them from the Springs stood black against the stars.
“You hope?” he said.
“Have you a good nerve?” asked Mr. Falls. “I think you have.”
“Why do you ask that, for God’s sake!”
“Look here.”
Dikon moved towards him and he at once turned about and led the way to the base of a hillock. The eruptive noises were now much louder. Falls waited for Dikon and took him by the elbow. His fingers were like steel. Dikon saw that they stood at a junction of red-and-white-flagged tracks on the native side of the mound above Taupo-tapu. It was on the summit of this mound that Dikon and Gaunt had stood on the evening that they first saw Taupo-tapu.
“When I came to look for Colonel Claire,” said Falls, “I stood for a moment in the gap in the fence. As I looked, a man’s figure appeared against the sky-line. He carried a torch and I saw him in silhouette. He must have been somewhere near the extinct geyser you passed a moment ago. I was about to hail him when I noticed that he wore an overcoat, and then I knew that it couldn’t be the Colonel so I let him go. I’d looked for Colonel Claire all over the village and I now decided that he must have gone home by way of the reserve and by this time would have got too far for it to be worth while calling him back. I stood there idly waiting for the figure of the man in the overcoat to appear again on the sky-line, as it was bound to do when I climbed this hillock. I knew that it would be a little time before you left so I paused long enough to take out my pipe and fill it. I remember thinking how ancient the half-seen landscape felt, and how alien. I don’t know if it was long, perhaps it was half a minute, before I realized that the man in the overcoat was taking a long time to reach the hillock. I wondered if he, like myself, stood listening to the working of this hell-brew. Then I heard the scream.”