"She is not without friends who appreciate her," said Hypatia, smiling at the enthusiasm of the sympathetic prelate. "Fortunate girl! to be born to a heroine's task, a heroine's applause. This is the last home of romance, it would appear, since it has quitted Britain, at any rate for the present."
"Have you heard the last rumour about her, my lord?" said Mr. Summers.
"No, indeed. Koihua and I came across the bush after leaving the Forest Rangers before Orakau. I trust no harm to her is feared."
"No, but the situation is not wholly free from risk. A young lieutenant of the Forest Rangers, wounded in the storming party, which was repulsed at the Gate Pah, is reported missing. It is said that she was seen with a small party of natives, who carried him off at the bidding of her father, and that neither she nor he have been since heard of."
"In that case it is most probable that she saved his life, and, in the absence of definite information, I should be inclined to believe that he has been taken to a place of safety, where he will remain for the present. What did you say his name was?"
"Roland Massinger."
"Not De Massinger of the Court, in Herefordshire—surely not?" said the bishop, more keenly interested. "I saw him in camp when I came from Pukerimu, poor boy! I knew his people well in England—among the very oldest families in the land. I met him soon after his arrival in Auckland. Whatever hard fate brought him into this disastrous strife? But I should not say fate; rather the will of God, which often from present chastening leads to our eventual gain. But the time draws near for our service—the last, most probably, that I shall hold here. It will be my farewell to these poor people, whom I have loved and prayed for so often."
And as the good man retired to his chamber for the preparation of prayer which he always held to be necessary, even in the most thinly populated and apparently humble localities, Hypatia took the opportunity of escaping from a conversation which threatened embarrassing conditions.
Punctually at the appointed hour, the bell of the little church having sounded for the canonical time, the man of God walked through the crowd of dark-skinned proselytes, who awaited his arrival with unaffected reverence; and murmurs of approbation were heard as he paced with solemn steps towards the humble building, for which many of those present had contributed labour or materials. Yet were not all fully agreed. Some of the older men had been acted upon by the disaffected of the tribe, and hardly concealed their distrust of the pihopa, who went between the contending forces, and might, perhaps, convey information to their foes. This allegation, openly made at the rebel camp, caused the good bishop the most poignant grief—to think that his people, his children in the Lord, as he fondly called them, should distrust him, who for them, for their present advantage and eternal weal, had sacrificed the intellectual luxuries of the parent land, his place among the noble and the great, all the unspeakable social advantages which await the distinguished son of literature and the Church in Britain! And for what? To live in self-imposed exile in a distant colony, among a barbarous people but recently redeemed from the grossest heathen practices! It was more than discouraging, it was heartbreaking, to one of his sensitive temperament and fervent spirit.
The service of the Church of England was read by Mr. Summers. Hypatia was touched by the manner in which the responses were made by young and old. Nowhere in the world could more earnestness have been shown, less apparent wavering from the appointed ritual, which was wholly in the Maori tongue. She had made sufficient progress in the language to follow easily—a task lightened by the preponderance of vowels and the disuse of the perplexing consonants so frequent in European tongues. A greater advance can be made in Maori in a shorter time than in almost any living language. There is much of the ore rotundo claimed for the noble fundamental languages, which now only survive among degenerate descendants of the orators, warriors, statesmen, and artists, who, while they rolled out the sonorous sentences, swayed the known world with their pre-eminence in arts and arms, speech and song.