Promenade
III
III
Troops were pouring in red-hot from Australia and Tasmania, leaving the game of guarding convicts for the sterner game of war. Clippers racing Home with their cargoes of wool and hides carried frenzied appeals for the help which England sent with rising indignation. Did that impossible country want all her regiments in order to settle these puerile disagreements?
The iron in Peregrine was turning to steel. Brian must go to the war. In a year Jerry would go. Roddy (if he still lived) would go. This country which he had strug- gled for twenty years to develop meant to take all his splendid sons from him, did it? So he went up to the barracks to enlist in the militia, and found Corny there, his red face pale and sagging.
“Haini an' all the boys have gone off to join the Maoris,” said Corny. “I've always told 'em I'd shoot 'em myself if they did. I will too. God save the Queen,” said Corny, staggering a little as he went to put his name down.
There was the first of the half-caste tragedies. But there would be many more.
So England's nursemaiding of the Maoris was over; and very pleased the Maoris were, with young men from many tribes which had nothing to do with Taranaki joyously dropping spades and paddles and rushing to try their tupara-guns in this pleasant game of war. War with the pakeha, with other tribes, blazing up everywhere like the fire in the fern, like the little homesteads, the sown crops that smoked to the chilly skies. Ministers chartered a brig and came up the coast to open, Parliament and say what they thought of Gore Browne for presuming to start a war without them, and New Zealand's South Island, secure from menace, banged the big drum for the sovereignty of the Queen.
“Shall the British race truckle to a handful of savages?” cried the South, while the North laboured and sweated and cursed its way through constant rain to the front … so far as there was a front, with Maoris jumping in every direction like jack-in-the-boxes. “Come, tread on our feet—make haste,” they cried exultantly; while the women, carrying heavy kits of kumeras and gourds and maize up the cultivated slopes of the big pas to fill the storehouses, stopped now and then to send their shrill “Riria … fight on” out into the wilderness.
In Te Patiti's pa Hemi and other stalwarts worked furiously at setting the new palisades of huge squared tree-boles with jagged tops, digging underground saps of long winding ways, digging trenches behind the outer fortifications. Excellent engineers though the Maoris were, all this was of no use against the English cannon, thought Hemi, pausing to rub the rain from his face, for it was always raining now, and about him in the rain the great trees stood in the mist like ghosts.
It's all of no use, thought Hemi. He had read of the Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, the English Queen sitting on her golden throne in London town. Everywhere went the English like bees. Kill one and you have an angry dozen at your door. But Hemi's Begats (Tihane had said) went back further than those in the Bible. He must fight for the Maori. He could not shame his Begats.
Dirty crumpled newspapers coming in to be dried and read at the council fires told of many gold discoveries in the South, of railways, whatever they might be. The South, too, was rude about the Maoris, though evidently not intending to join the fight. And the North was clamouring for the return of Governor Grey, whom they hated so much. Even he would be better than this present muddling Gore Browne, said the papers. But they said that of every governor. “Has the English tribe no head chief at all?” inquired Te Patiti.
Providence had turned Puck to torment the English; for it was a cruel winter of endless rain; and everywhere half-drowned bullocks churned up soil rich with the deposit of endless centuries in struggling to haul the sunken wagons; and men, rigorously strapped and buttoned into tight uniforms and choking collars, unhappily unloaded the heavy cases, and strained with the bullocks, and loaded up again.
“Are the military doing anything except bring all the mud of the bush into Auckland?” demanded gentlemen, seeing carts, caked to the axles, creaking slowly in with the wounded under the soaked blue blankets. Tiffany went daily to the hospital now, carrying delicacies for the wounded. But Dick was not there. Once she had ridden out to the farm with Jerry, and Darien looked at her askance. With a dozen young horses to be daily curry-combed that they might bring their price she wanted no sentimental outpourings from Tiffany who, with Dick Sackville to help her, would certainly have experienced something.
Tiffany made no effort to outpour. While Jerry and Caroline's Lucilla talked Auckland on the veranda Tiffany stood straight and slim in her riding-habit by the fire and asked if Aunt Darien would forward any letters that came for her under cover, please. “You could send them in vegetables or something. Papa always opens anything in the way of letters,” said Tiffany, looking into the fire that made her eyes so bright.
“H'm,” said Darien. “I suppose you've already arranged it with your correspondent?” No man, certainly not Dick Sackville, would keep his head with a Tiffy looking so divinely glorious and young, though less merry than she used to be.
“Yes,” said Tiffany. She hesitated a moment. “Thank you,” she said, taking up her whip and gloves.
Darien, although asking no confidences, was naturally annoyed at not getting them. “Those who have been there say it is hotter fighting than in the Crimea,” she remarked, pulling off her heavy boots. “I always thought it would be. Nick Flower's the only man I know who puts the Maori at his real value.” I wonder when I'll see him again, she thought, regarding the arch of her foot … quite as fine as when he brought her those slippers from Sydney. Some day she would get into fallas once more and astonish the macaronis. But I must make some money first, she thought, kissing Tiffany good-bye, watching her ride away in the rain. Tiffy had never gushed like poor old John's girls. Perhaps, thought Darien resentfully, she hardly gushed enough.
The war went on, taking the incoming regiments, taking Hew and Brian, swallowing them up in the deep bush and giving back nothing but helpless men. The hazard, the desperate allure of colonization, was beginning to reveal itself to Peregrine as a mocking dream, when Roddy returned as another mocker; walking in one evening as the family drank tea, looking round with a genial air.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I hope I find you well,” said Roddy courteously, being every inch a man, especially with two females instantly hanging on his neck and expressing joy (in the usual manner of females) by tears.
Peregrine gulped his mouthful of cake; felt the world reel round him; asserted himself with an icy: “May I ask the meaning of this intrusion?”
“It means that he's come home,” cried Tiffany, laughing. Such a different Tiffany all in a moment, glowing like a rose in her wine-colour gown. Roddy had come. Roddy, her other self, from whom she had never had any secrets. All the lovely past which she would never never regret would be so enriched by Roddy now with his old blue pea-jacket, his graceful air which had earned him the title of Don Rodrigo among the girls.
“How are you, sir?” inquired Roddy, coming up beaming through a perfect fountain of kisses.
“Is that all you have to say after your—your—” Peregrine choked, quite unable to accept this version of the Prodigal Son.
“I've been over on the Nelson side: Collingwood gold-fields,” explained Roddy. “Of course I came back to enlist as soon as I heard of the war.”
“Oh, my dearest, you're so wet,” cried Sally, actually ignoring Mr Lovel. “You must change at once, and how shocking hungry you must be,” dragging Roddy away as though fearing he had never fed since he left her.
Peregrine remained by the fire, warming his hands in silence. There it was. Sons only returning in order to go away again and be killed. He looked at stocky blue-eyed Jerry steadily consuming cakes and tea just as though he wouldn't be the next if this appalling war kept on. If I could only send him down to Canterbury, he thought. But a boy of fifteen couldn't be trusted. I must wait, decided Peregrine, who never trusted anybody and de-tested waiting.
After Tiffany had gone to bed Roddy came as in the old days to sit on the foot of it. But they were man and woman now, each with their deep knowledge, and it was not until the candle went out that Tiffany laid her cheek to his and they really began to talk. Roddy understood. He was not, he felt dryly, the ethereal fool he had been. But he was intensely distressed, though trying to hide it for the sake of dear Tiffy, all tears and laughter.
“You must marry him now, Tiffy. Papa wouldn't prevent it now.”
“He would, Roddy. Do you think papa could change— except to grow harder? You know what he feels about the submission of children, especially females. The laws of the Medes and Persians are nothing to papa's,” said Tiffany, all bubbling with the relief of telling everything to her own Roddy.
“I think he should be told, dear.”
“Oh, my poor boy, how sadly you have forgotten papa. He would spurn me from the door in his best manner. Can't you see him doing it? He would forbid my name to be mentioned as he did with you. That wouldn't help anybody and … and he could hurt Dick very much, I fear,” whispered Tiffany.
I'd cheerfully help him there, thought Roddy. This fellow … this Sackville whom he'd never seen … he had dared … he had been in this little room. And Tiffy, her eyes and heart still holden by her love, had no regrets.
“He must marry you,” Roddy said.
“Silly! I told you how he wanted to, but papa … oh, when one isn't old enough and he might be killed what can one do?” cried Tiffany, beginning to tremble.
These laws! thought Roddy. Made by old folk who have forgot their youth. But they had saved him. He would have married Eriti, and he so seldom thought of her now. He said slowly:
“Mamma couldn't do anything, the poor little dear. I think I'll go out and talk to Aunt Darien, Tiffy.” This business needs a woman's wit, he thought, very conscious of the bungling ways of men.
“Then tell her,” said Tiffany (and he knew how she was sitting up very straight in the darkness with her glowing eyes and cheeks), “that what I have done is my own affair. I am myself, and I have the right to my own life. It's not for papa to make my life. It's for me.”
Roddy thought of that little weary voice of long ago, coming so valiantly out of the dark of this same attic. We are us, now, Roddy. Papa can't touch that. A fine thing to be Us, to be Myself, taking one's sins on one's own head! Poor proud hot-hearted Tiffy, a very Lovel, refusing to be coerced though the heavens fell on her. Roddy kissed her tenderly.
“I'll go to Aunt Darien to-morrow. Now you must sleep, dear. It'll be all right,” he promised.
No way of making it right that he could see, but Darien might. Nothing she liked better than tilting at the impossible, he thought, finding her alone in the dim stable next day, feeding an early lamb from a bottle. And certainly with her short skirts and that red springing hair she looked capable of tackling anything. No languishing beauty now; but she could still move a man. She moved Roddy watching her with anxious eyes as she sat on the corn-bin, swinging her heavy boots, pinching her full red lip in the funny way she had. A quite inexplicable fascinating lady, this Darien.
“Of course Tiffy's been a hopeless fool,” she remarked when Roddy had finished. “But she's quite right about Peregrine playing the heavy father. That's part of his religion. I never did trust Dick Sackville,” she added, conveniently forgetting her part in this.
“I've thought I could go down … a duel … or he might be killed by now,” said Roddy, walking distractedly on the cobblestones. A wakeful night and morning prayers with papa praying for an erring son had brought him nearly to the end of his tether.
“Dick won't be killed. His sort never are. Well, she ought to be married or Hew will come back with a nice little wound and Peregrine will try to fix up that business. The stiff black rig!” said Darien, regretting that she had never found time to make the wax-figure full of pins. “Does Tiffy know where Sackville is now, Rod?”
“Waikato. Road-making in the Rotorua District when she last heard.”
“That was a week ago. I sent the letter inside a vegetable-marrow. I've always wanted to go to Rotorua— the stinking place! A settler down there is said to have the finest Lincoln sheep….I don't see why she shouldn't be married in Rotorua, Rod. People do all kinds of things in war-time, and the Lovel name wouldn't be known there as it is here.”
“Impossible to get her to Rotorua,” said Roddy shortly. There was Darien off on wild-goose chases again, and the heavy ammonia-scent of the stable was so tiring, and he was so sick at heart.
“If things won't happen one can generally make 'em,” said Darien, slipping off the corn-bin. “Go and tell Lucilla we're wanting tea, will you? I've got to think this out.”
She kissed Roddy affectionately when he rode away. A charming fellow, and it was nice to kiss a man again. Roddy was not the simpleton he had been. Learned a bit on the gold-fields, she'd go bail. “Don't fret, Rod. I think I see my way,” she whispered to herself, Lucilla being always all ears. Now, if Nick Flower is still in town, she thought, trudging back cheerfully to the lambs and calves. Lord, what a temper His Omnipotence would be in if only she could get Tiffy safely married.