As for Hypatia, her fearless, eager spirit, scornful of obstacles and inglorious ease, rejoiced in the difficulties of the position. After a laborious day's work, during which she astonished the Maori handmaids by the energy which she threw into her household tasks, working in common with them, and eagerly possessing herself of the vernacular, she pored over Maori grammars and dictionaries with an ardour not inferior to that which had secured her the unique academical distinctions of her year. She learned the history, the language, the manners and customs of the singular people among whom she dwelt, with a rapidity which astonished Mr. Summers, and caused him to remark to his wife that he had been wont to consider the scholastic triumphs of her friend somewhat exaggerated, but was happy now to recant and apologize. Never before had he seen a woman in whom were allied extraordinary mental powers with such unflagging industry, steady application with such brilliant conceptions. Sufficiently rare among men, the combination was almost unknown, in his experience, among women students.
"You have left out her beauty and her simplicity of manner, my dear," said his wife, as she smiled up at her husband's earnest face. "You generally remark these attributes first, you know."
"True—most true," he said, relaxing his countenance. "These I had forgotten. They make the sum-total of high gifts in her case still more surprising. For the most part beauties are neither clever nor studious. Nor are the studious women beautiful. Nature, in a fit of absence of mind, has split the ingredients while fashioning her favourites, and given Miss Tollemache a double allowance of good looks with all the talents."
"Leaving some poor girl high and dry with neither," said Mrs. Summers. "You do see that occasionally. Watch her there; she does not look like the top mathematician of her year."
Nor did she, perhaps, to a superficial eye, as she sat outside the detached building which served as a kitchen, peeling potatoes, or rather scraping them, native fashion, with a shell; afterwards placing them in a wooden vessel shaped like a canoe for future culinary treatment, the while in animated conversation with Miru, a good-humoured, round-faced native girl, whose peals of laughter were evoked from time to time by her wonderful Maori sentences.
"Yes," said Cyril Summers, "there she sits, suitably dressed, yet looking like a society girl at a South Kensington cookery class, perfectly at her ease with Miru, who worships her, and yet doing the work that is set before her thoroughly and efficiently."
"She takes the deepest interest in our converts, too," said Mrs. Summers. "'One ought to prefer our white heathen, of course,' she said to me the other day, 'but I must confess they seem to me unutterably inferior in manners, dignity, and truthfulness to this race. Their ingrained selfishness and coarseness always revolted me, in spite of my sense of duty. Now, these people have all the simplicity and directness of nature. Such courage, too! What tales we hear from the front of their contempt of danger! They are, or rather have been, cruel; but so have all nations in the barbaric stage. We don't hear of anything but straightforward fighting now, and that is easy to understand when one looks around on this beautiful country.'"
"Yes, indeed. I suppose it must have come sooner or later. Yet when you contrast the old peaceful mode of living—which I used to admire when we first came here, and were not afraid to visit their kaingas—with the present, one cannot but grieve. It was the most perfect embodiment of the fabled Arcadian life that could be imagined. The palisaded pah, at once a fortress and a town, serving the purpose of the feudal castle of the Middle Ages, to which the inhabitants retreated in time of war; the fields and gardens so neatly cultivated, the groups of women and children, the young men and girls of the tribe, the gossip, the laughter, the games and exercises, of which they had a great variety; then our canoe trips on the broad Waikato, or short boat excursions from the coast settlements;—such pictures of natural rural contentment, as superior to the ordinary life of common Europeans as can be conceived."
"But then their wars—cruel and remorseless. Think of Rauparaha and Hongi! Think of the wholesale massacres, the cannibal feasts, the torturings, the burnings!"
"No doubt. All these things were done in their unregenerate days, but after the advent of that great and good man, Marsden, in 1830, and the establishment of missionary stations, these horrors gradually lessened and were in process of dying out."