Promenade
Chapter I
Chapter I
From the back of the old four-poster bed, where blue flowers and white butterflies melted together in the faded chintz hangings, Darien watched Sally undressing just outside the pale pool of candle-light. Like little ghosts on top of the wardrobe, Sally's dolls sat in a row, staring with round eyes as though not at all understanding why they were not packed in the big trunks out in the passage and going away with Sally and Darien and Mr Lovel to New Zealand.
But Darien understood. “You will have babies instead now, won't you?” she had asked Sally. “Married people always do.” Then Sally went pinker than the dolls, say-in, “Hush, darling,” as she had said it every day for ages now, and Darien was tired of hushing. And tired of seeing Sally fold her clothes neatly and slip on her nightgown before she took off her shift, instead of perhaps dancing about, bare and white and dimpled and laughing, just as God made her, and pretending she was a nymph in a hazel copse or the flame of a sacrificial fire or something. Sally used to have such lovely pretendings, but they were all gone now.
“Why do you have to be married to-morrow, Salvolatile?” demanded Darien, sitting up suddenly. “Let that stiff black rig go to New Zealand by himself. I expect the savages will eat him.”
“Oh … don't … don't,” cried Sally, her blue eyes looking quite wild under the mass of soft brown hair she was putting in curl-papers. Sally always looked like that when one talked of New Zealand. She was afraid to face things; but Darien wasn't. Often she faced the fact that she might have been christened Nombre de Dios or Old Calabar. Mamma had had her way with Sally, but since papa was going to die so soon she had let him be as romantic as he chose in naming Darien, who (upon diligent inquiry into herself) had discovered that she was romantic too and would probably have a grande passion in New Zealand. She feared that Sal-volatile hadn't the grande passion for Mr Lovel.
Sally feared it also, just as she feared New Zealand. Mr Lovel, she knew, was inevitable, having bought the tickets … but she could never call him Peregrine, which sounded like a duck or something. “Peregrine is a hawk and he's just like one,” said Darien, who read far too much for a child of nine. So he is, thought Sally, shivering.
Aunt Matilda's heavy step sounded down the passage. Sally flung a desperate glance about her. She should have been in bed, but there was no time to get there; so she dropped on her knees (hoping God would forgive her) and buried her flushed face in the coverlet, hearing Darien giggle as the portentous lady came pecking her way through the dusky sweetness of the little room.
Aunt Matilda looked like a widow, in wide purple dressing-gown and black cap; but when maiden ladies grow elderly they often like to pretend they are widows, thought Darien, while Sally rose, standing meekly with her pretty head drooped shyly under the close little nightcap.
“I am pleased to find you at your prayers, my love,” said Aunt Matilda, giving the impression that she didn't find Sally there often enough. “A young lady who has turned fifteen and is about to marry,” she said, sounding very experienced, “has need of many prayers.”
“Poor thing,” said Sally faintly. She was thinking that herself.
“Remember that Darien is now in your care. I do feel,” said Aunt Matilda, very confused between gratitude and rebellion, “that it is exceedingly kind of Mr Peregrine Lovel to give my poor brother's orphans a better chance than I could … though I have done my best and no angel could do more and Darien so troublesome about her flannel petticoats…. I hope you are prepared to be a dutiful wife, Sally.”
“Yes, Aunt Matilda,” said Sally, feeling that there wasn't anything she need mind promising now, because to-morrow she would have to promise to love and obey Mr Lovel.
“I … I …” floundered Aunt Matilda. But there was so little a maiden lady could say to a niece about to marry, and besides she knew so little. “I wish you always to remember that buttermilk is excellent for the skin. Wear your best gloves when people come to call, and see that Darien don't freckle…. Now, let me tuck you up, or you will be pale to-morrow and gentlemen don't like pale brides….”
Under the chintz curtains Sally felt a whirlwind of arms and legs about her, felt Darien's sharp little chin digging into her shoulder.
“Oh, Sal-volatile, let's run away and then we can always be together. Nurse says you will always have to be with Mr Lovel now. Why will you?”
“Oh, please hush, Darien,” begged Sally, feeling the crying coming up in her again. Why was all this happening to her? She didn't know, although Mr Lovel and Aunt Matilda seemed to. “Oh, dear,” she murmured, childishly.
“Slay him in his sleep, like Elvira in the ‘Phantom Bride,’” urged Darien, who read all the “Keepsakes” in Aunt Matilda's bookshelf. “I'll find a knife.”
But Sally (although feeling like a phantom to-night, with all the dear familiar little room gone strange about her) knew that she mustn't do that. To love, honour and obey … how much did that mean, she wondered, lying with innocent blue eyes wide in the dark long after Darien was sleeping. So little she knew, and so much to learn. And she would never be able to ask Mr Lovel, stalking along so tall above her with his dark haughty face folded into his stock. Why am I so frightened? He is not unkind, she thought, trying to be brave. So thickly now those reverberations from the ages past sounded in her bewildered blood; whispering voices (oh, that ghostly sister-company of women's whispering voices); echoing of tired feet down alien ways; strange difficult dedications, all the long mysterious litany of unescapable womanhood….
II
On this same night of January 13, 1839, lights and log fires were bright in the library of Lovel Old Hall, where Mr Peregrine Lovel stood before the tall mantel reading to three irritated gentlemen from a variety of note-books. A decorative fellow, Peregrine, conceded Major Henry Lovel, sunk in a big saddle-back chair. One of the black Lovels, with a long lean elegance denied to John who, being a year the elder, unfortunately had the title. Peregrine, thought the Major with grudging admiration, would somehow have got the better of this damned aftermath of the Peninsula Wars which was driving the gentry out of the country to the doose knew where … as Lovels were being driven now that Old Hall was up the spout. Poor John, moving about like a huge fair beetle in claret-colour coat, had been too much the country squire to stop leaks.
“But we must take a cow, Peregrine,” said John, returning from gloomy contemplation of a frilled Sir Godfrey on the wall. “Caroline proposes to wean Belinda on the voyage.”
“We cannot take a cow,” said Peregrine, glancing up with those black eyes which, thought Jermyn, were always too close together. Being merely an orphan cousin, Jermyn felt himself free to say what he chose. He said it now.
“Lady Lovel is not near so likely to go dry as a cow would.”
“Your remarks are not always in the best of taste,” remarked Peregrine curtly.
“They'll be in worse taste in New Zealand,” promised Jermyn. Baiting Peregrine seemed the one comfort left to a handsome young gentleman of seventeen whose head was stuffed with dreams of nymphs and fair ladies and who was beginning to fear that the only nymphs available in New Zealand would be savages with thin legs and fat stomachs.
“Buxom pioneer's wife, Caroline,” said Major Henry, watching the firelight through his brandy-glass. “Good stuff in Sally too. Egad, you boys know how to pick for breedin' colonists. It alway's took the clingin' little darlin's to catch me.”
“Caroline is determined on a cow,” persisted John, adding weakly, “so am I.”
“We cannot take a cow,” said Peregrine, who was quite capable of saying that all night. Rather sorry for John, Jermyn suggested a goat. Besides, a goat might butt Peregrine—tumble him, with his chaste nankeens, his sherry-colour body-coat, and his certainties into the scuppers. What would he do then, thought Jermyn, unable to imagine an uncivil Peregrine even in hell. Pray take my seat, he would say, setting Caroline down to sizzle. Dear Lord, who'd have ever thought Lovels would go voyaging with a Caroline whose father had been in trade. As for himself, he would continue to draw the caricatures which made him so popular … although it is difficult to be popular with the ladies on nothing a year. At least there will be laxity in the Antipodes, thought Jermyn, seeing himself gathering up Maori wives by the dozen … with that old rip Major Henry running' him hard.
Now John, his ruddy face illuminated by two stiff nips and Peregrine's concession of the goat, was comforting his troubled soul by the vision of raising Another England in the Antipodes; but Peregrine (Ben Jonson's Pragmatick Young Man to the life) scuttled that.
“England has betrayed us. I repudiate her. My children shall be colonist entirely.”
“He means to have a doosed lot of 'em, too. People the country, eh?” thought the Major, stretching his legs to the fire. Of his three nephews he liked Peregrine least; but he was a damn practical fellow, which was why they were all sittin' round him, egad, like dogs waggin' their tails. Peregrine was responsible for this exodus to New Zealand—which no one knew anything about and even the Colonial Office declined to recognize.
“England holds no jurisdiction over it,” the Colonial Office had said firmly. “At the request of the missionaries, we sent out Mr Busby as British Resident, but we gave him no powers whatever.” The Colonial Office could do something handsome for them in Van Diemen's Land: “Quite a number of indigent officers taking up our grants of land out there,” said the C.O.
John had rather warmed to the indigent officers. “Like us, dang it,” he had said, sadly. But Peregrine had bristled with difficulties. In New Zealand you could buy a hundred acres for an iron pot, he said, making a note to order pots. You could get rich in New Zealand, and he had not the least intention of consorting with Englishmen in the future. “We will start fresh,” said Peregrine, who was quite capable of making himself King of New Zealand if he chose, and who always knew how to trim the sails that would bring him safe to harbour.
A man of one idea and that a wrong 'un, thought the Major. He went heavily up the shallow old oak stairs, carrying his candle at a better angle than male Lovels often did at this time of night. Doosed difficult to be convivial with Peregrine about. Could a man be convivial with Maoris and missionaries? The Major groaned, rubbing his red nose. If it weren't for this monstrous shortage of money he and his old hide trunks would go no more a-roaming, but none of them dare cut loose from Peregrine. He is the brains (thought the Major, damning brains) of the whole Lovel connection.
In the library Peregrine, warming to it, was setting the date of departure at six weeks ahead. “I fear anything earlier will be impossible. We have to allocate the space in the hold … have you your list of requirements here, John?”
“It's near one o'clock,” pleaded John, always anxious to postpone the evil day. “I think Caroline … and you're being married to-morrow, you know.”
“Are your lists here?” Yes, thought Jermyn, Peregrine's eyes are much too close. Is he a hawk or an eagle? We shall find out when he spreads his wings in New Zealand. John brought some papers from an inlaid French bureau, and Peregrine began to read.
“A full feather bed. Twenty feather pillows. Twenty bottles of dill-water for Belinda…. Have you supplemented Caroline's list at all, John?”
John muttered something about garden-rollers, and Jermyn suggested peacocks. Peregrine put the papers together silently. He had a way of making his silences so impressive that they were almost holy. The flickering candle-light showed him a little high-shouldered, ready to pounce. Jermyn mixed himself a last brandy, whistling softly. This Antipodes affair would be run entirely to Peregrine's design—of which the new wife would have to be a compliant part. Sally, eh? Jermyn was always sorry for the Sallys of the world, who sounded such care-free children and had to help Peregrines found families. Good God, he thought, startled, it's going to be a hell of a life for the women. We should leave them behind.
But not even Peregrine, for all his efficiency, could found a family without one. Now he was saying suavely: “I think you had better leave the lists to me. We have neither time nor space for unessentials. Good night.”
Dismissed, they went uneasily away. Even Sir John Lovel in his own house couldn't browbeat Peregrine, now standing alone in his tall lean elegance, staring down into the fire. Like that fire, he too could burn up obstacles—and would. Easy John; the bluff bragging old soldier Uncle Henry; Jermyn the untried boy, the women … he would have them all on his shoulders. And he could carry them, manipulate them, dispose of them to his will, like God….