Promenade

IV

IV

It is a wise person who knows just where small things end and great things begin. They seem to run into each other so, thought Linda's Prue, feeling how they were doing it now with the going off of the boys to the South African war in this October of 'ninety-nine. They looked on it as a game…. Jerry's sons, other men's sons, while for Prue the tremendous march of evolution went continually past her door with its ringing feet … and never came in.

It would be more than a game to me, she thought, leaving her horse at the top of the river-cutting and running down between cabbage-trees and flax already wild in the growing wind. Life, that was what it would be, and that was what they would find it, for all their clear eyes and careless laughter. She stooped to tear a flax-blade apart, suck the red gum, so bitter beneath the sweet. Always she had loved the flax-gum because it was different from anything else, just as she loved to ride bareback, feeling the rough throbbing body between her knees. Janet and Deb had never wanted to do that, and they had become good wives and mothers of families.

There must be something the matter with me because I can't take that decorous and well-trod road … and there's no other for a woman, thought Prue, caught by the full blast of the nor'west as she turned the corner, and was pinned gasping against the clay cliff. She pulled off her hat, letting the wind tear at her black hair, pepper her pale face and scarlet mouth with sand-particles, wind her skirt about her long slender limbs.

This, anyway, was life; if not that gracious life of sarabands and love, that sudden hot strange passion of flesh and spirit which one man had brought to her life for so short a time. Bethune would never come back. His kind didn't. If his wandering feet still carried him anywhere it would be to other loves. So let us stretch empty arms to this boisterous lover, the royal nor'wester; stripping with his hot power mountains and valleys clean of snow, sending the raging torrents down this wide grey desolate river-bed, until startled little backwaters clucked and whitened and ran together, and on sand-spits and scrubby islands driftwood skeletons waked and clashed their bones. Only another burial and resurrection for the skeletons who, what with blown sands and floods, had experienced so many.

A fine thing to be the nor'wester, or even somebody's son going to the war, thought Prue, riding home as best she might through a scatter of little flying stones on the road, tall hedges whipping at her face, and dust everywhere.

All the folk driving that evening to Bendemeer for Darien's good-bye party to young soldiers endured this buffeting bellowing dusty dark according to their natures; and Peregrine, muffled up on the front seat of the Lovel Hall dog-cart beside Jerry, endured it like a deeply-annoyed and rather shaky eighty-three. New Zealand, after all he had done for her, had failed him. Sally (for whom he had done so very much) had failed him, leaving him to be cared for by sons and daughters-in-law who had built the Lovel Hall veranda too narrow and their family much too wide and noisy. And the winds were a disgrace to anybody, and so was Caroline, who was certain to talk politics to-night, though she knew how they upset his digestion.

“Here we are,” said Jerry, thankful for the sudden shelter of the macrocapa hedge, the comparative hush of this bullying roar. “A brutal wind. I hope it didn't knock you out, sir,” he added, helping his parent to descend before the open welcoming doors.

“I do not knock out,” said Peregrine testily. These young things would persuade him that he was old if he allowed them. Great Heavens! What a nasty old witch Caroline looked, with her fat raddled cheeks and her simpering at the young fellows over a fan of purple feathers. Peregrine put up his eyeglass with an air, offered austere greetings, permitted Linda (still pretty in a pink, cushiony middle-age) to kiss his cheek, retreated from a lean enveloping Emily, and repulsed with an elegant snarl Sophia rushing with footstools and cushions.

Too many young people; too much noise and colour; far too much Darien in saffron silk and diamonds, laughing, joking, pervading everything. That woman would never know how to behave. None of this generation knew how to behave in the presence of their elders, thought Peregrine, staring aloofly at flushed faces, white shoulders, black sleeves crushing together round the piano where Jerry's Brian was going to sing. That long-legged black gawk might be the best rider on the Plains, but he had none of the grace of Peregrine's own boy Brian, killed … how many years ago? Yet this youngster was going away to be killed too. And Jerry's Roderick was going—which Jerry should not allow, since he would carry on the title some day. Unless his own Roddy married a Chinese, which was quite likely since he had lately accompanied an expedition to Tibet.

“La!” cried Linda. “See the old gentleman quizzing us. What are you thinking about, Uncle Peregrine?”

“Peregrine,” cried Caroline, waking from a doze which had set her ornate cap crooked … (Sally's cap … always crooked …) “who did you vote for at the last elections? I didn't see you there.”

Parliament, out-heroding Herod, had given women the suffrage in 'ninety-three. Peregrine said frigidly: “It makes no matter whom one votes for in these days.”

“Now, now,” cried Caroline, trying (Heaven forgive her) to be voluptuous with three chins, “don't tell me you think we ladies don't deserve the vote.”

“I do not think the country deserved it … any more than it deserved the Land for Settlements Act that cut up the large properties, which alone gave it distinction. Nor its continuous ministry. Nor its pandering to Labour with higher wages and shorter hours. Nor its earthquakes. But it has to suffer them.”

Shoo, fly, don't bother me,
For I belong to Company G….

sang the fresh young voices at the piano. Tiffany, bringing a screen to keep the draught from this lean old frigid papa who would never forgive her, said cheerfully: “New Zealand can never keep quiet, can it?”

Indeed that was true enough. Maoris, wars, parliaments, bad times, earthquakes … . But New Zealand had conquered all except the earthquakes.

“I always think,” announced Caroline, “that we don't trust enough. If we had trusted more we should never have had this shocking Land and Income Tax Bill. Linda don't like it. No more do I.”

“It don't hurt you,” said Darien. “You haven't an income. But what it's costing me…. Good Lord! I suppose Jerry pays yours, Peregrine.”

Darien was very happy to-night. She was still the richest person in the district; breeding the finest sheep and horses; entertaining scores of hungry riders at the hunt breakfasts; giving her carpet-dances and tennis-parties; scattering presents among all these young things, who (since they were not of her own blood) were quite decently grateful. A clean, open-air, vigorous crowd, the young things with their shining hair and eyes and their clear skins.

Darien knew how they kept her young … hard masculine arms flung in careless caress round her shoulder as she passed, soft lips dropping warm little kisses. But they ought to be at their marrying, all the same. Given a little more time and she'd have had Rick and Annot Crofts mated before he went away. It was criminal that Rick, who would one day be Sir Roderick Lovel, should leave no progeny. But since humans were so unreasonable and the boys leaving to-morrow, even Darien at her most Homeric couldn't do anything now.

Since turgid patriotism was the fashion of the day everyone sang “The Soldiers of the Queen.”

For the sake of England's glory, lads,
When we had to show them what we mean….

And “The Boys in Blue.” And then it was:

There's a flag that waves o'er ev'ry sea, no matter when or where,
And to treat that flag as aught but free is more than the strongest dare….

Pernicious mush, thought Peregrine, who had never forgiven England for allowing New Zealand to be free, any more than he had forgiven her when she didn't allow it. Visions of New Zealand rushing freely down headlong paths to perdition were enough to make a politician of the early days feel positively ill. Peregrine (quite ready to feel ill in a suitable cause) considered the lavish angry 'seventies with Grey giving birth to that unspeakable Opposition; the agonized 'eighties, when wheat and wool sank to nothing, and soup-kitchens and Songs of the Shirt were everywhere, and labourers, brought at such cost to develop the country, departed in their thousands; the toilsome 'nineties struggling to climb the steep grade again.

All Grey's fault. The fault of that intense furious old man, launching his poisoned darts at everyone. Fighting for the “poor man,” he had said. Egad, he had made everybody poor….

“Did you know Sir George Grey, my dear?” he asked Linda, tasting that name still bitter on his tongue. All Grey's fault that there would be no great county families building ancestral mansions, strolling with pedigreed spaniels in their vast and elegant parks. Every little man with his wife and sons and daughters able to vote such glories out of existence; vote the parks into cabbage-patches, the pedigreed spaniels into mongrel sheep-dogs nipping a gentleman's heels…. A country for the commoner, this New Zealand, where he had once dreamed of kingship, of sons about him like the great land-barons of old.

Linda was charmed to remember Sir George Grey, who was such a perfect gentleman, though she never could understand why he had become so fond of the workingman. “But since neither of our boys wanted to go on the land I think it is a good thing the Government cut up so much of Durdans for closer settlement,” declared Linda, her head on one side, like a plump hen considering worms.

Andrew (who very much showed the effect of the 'eighties) thought it was all for the best, since the big stations couldn't have carried the whole burden of taxation. “Bendemeer can, and a few more, but the little settlers grow fine crops where we could only afford to run sheep. Though they do break down the fences confoundedly at hunts,” said Andrew, who had plenty of hares to hunt now and much less leisure to do it in—which wouldn't have surprised him if he had known as much about Fate's cantrips as Peregrine did.

“Come on,” cried Darien, crashing out great chords at the piano. “John Peel.” Swaying with linked arms and shining eyes, these hunting boys and girls, born to the saddle, to the open windy spaces, sang it richly:

For the sound of his horn brought me from my bed,
And the cry of the hounds that he oft-times led.
Peel's View-halloo…. Tally-ho…. Gone-Away-y-y

Boys and girls, curving hands to mouths, setting chins up and shoulders back, let some of their secret trouble go in a great shouting and laughter.

“You'll hear that in South Africa, Rick,” said grey-eyed Annot Crofts.

“I'll hear you,” muttered the future Sir Roderick, edging her away….

So there it went on, this insatiable promenade of the generations; stately in crinoline, gay and lightsome in a barn-dance, marching with drum and fife to war, soft in slippered feet over the fire. Two and two, the promenade, looking into each other's eyes and never seeing where they were going, or looking aside and seeing too far. And what it was all for who could say? And why God and Nature (so extremely insistent on physical promenades) should be so indifferent to spiritual ones, which had to get along as best they might, who could say, either? Not Tiffany, running to help Sophia bring in the great trays for supper.

“I can enjoy crayfish salad,” said Caroline, accepting a large plateful, “but I certainly don't think it wise for you, Peregrine. What about hot milk with a little nutmeg in it?”

Peregrine knew it so unwise that it might presently kill him. But what other riposte for a gentleman of his standing except to take a helping apparently designed for a ploughman and then allow Tiffany (who was really quite skilled in such matters) to dispose of it unostentatiously, leaving her own empty plate to be casually exhibited to Caroline. This little ruse pleased Peregrine so well that he bore with equanimity the ensuing speeches and presentations: Sophia giving each departing soldier a curio and a wool-worked text, and Darien giving watches (so vulgarly ostentatious), and Caroline calling each abashed youth up for a little good advice.

“Soon you'll all be back with South Africa in your pockets,” cried Darien, managing to squeeze Rick and Annot out of the crowd. He'd propose if he could get her through the door, she thought, and that was so much to the good.

“A grand parade of England's possessions, each blowing its own trumpet and out of step with all the rest,” said Prue, who was sometimes too much like Jermyn at his worst.

“We'll learn to keep step some day,” said Brian, going to the piano, singing in a mellow tender voice that made one think of Roddy….

Oh, kiss the cup and pledge me, dear.
No time our hearts can sever.
Life's wine grows old, and lips turn cold,
But love shall live for ever….

Darien peered round the gleaming shoulders, the black coats. Annot and Rick were gone and the door shut. True enough: no matter who lived and died, Love lived for ever.