Promenade

III

III

Nick Flower, having dropped I.O.U.'s long ago (as he dropped everything as soon as it had done its work) walked about Revell Street, Hokitika, in a broad-brimmed felt hat and heavy satin stock, acknowledging salutes from smiling wives of bank managers, from humble women curtsying beneath dark head-shawls, from landlords at every tavern door, from all the red-shirted crowd shouldering along. A triumphal progress, and well-deserved; since a man who can persuade a Government, which he has consistently fleeced, to promote and pay him is no common man, thought Flower, turning abruptly at a corner where the blaze of golden bracken, of sandhills winking in the sun led on to the cemetery. To a man occupied so intensely with mortal matters any suggestion of the termination of that mortality is necessarily unpleasant, and there was so much he still meant to do.

Here came Rod Lovel, walking in his rough miner's dress with that indefinable air of ease and authority which Flower could never compass, with the sure visions of youth in his good-looking brown face and eyes. In Hokitika, as elsewhere, the women were after Rod, always so carelessly courteous, passing now with a careless nod and smile. But turbulent enough had been Rod's and Flower's discussion of the humiliation put upon Tiffany. Fierce words, then a straight punch from Rod which would have floored another man. Flower had stood like an ox, never hitting back….

So they had made peace, as men do; smoking half the night together, talking, since bitterness turns to garrulity with age, and this young cock had been a good listener.

When the time came (in some far far distant future) for Flower to make a will Rod might get his riches, for Peregrine Lovel would be dead then and Flower would never halve them. Every man would be able to talk of the great fortune left by Nick Flower … who had been uncle to Rod Lovel all the time. So Flower had envisioned the future in his mind, following Rod's blow for his sister.

Now, in the hot dazzling street, people were suddenly shouting, running. White dust rose like a wall against sun and the blue sea. Flower stood a little dazed on the rough foot-path, and something out of a pantomine with crimson nostrils and foaming jaws burst from the dust, knocking him backward. He did not feel the great horses, the heavy brewer's wagon pass over him; nor did he feel any pain when Rod Lovel's face came through the dust (or some kind of mist) later, bending very low to hear Flower speak in a queer thread of a voice, like a small creek trickling through flax-bushes.

Flower had seen too many deaths not to know that his next journey would be under the velvet palls and the ostrich plumes, but he felt too tired to care. There was only one thing he wanted now, and he wanted that so urgently that Roddy took Cobb's coach next morning over the mountain passes and the long Plains and caught by luck the weekly boat now running from Christchurch to Wellington. Hurry, hurry, he found himself saying to the boat. Time is very short for Nick Flower.

He came unheralded, as folk always did in those days. For although a telegraph cable now connected the two Islands few considered it old enough to be trusted with messages; and so Jermyn was just reading of David Copperfield's proposal to Dora, and Sally weeping a little, when Roddy walked in, turning sentiment to joy.

“Oh, Roddy! Oh, my darling, you're more beautiful than ever,” cried Sally, lifted high in Roddy's arms, not unlike a little slim girl, now that crinolines were gone. Reluctantly Peregrine discovered that he agreed. Roddy was still the Lovel prince, since Jerry would always look a yokel. He was nearly pleased, greeting Roddy, asking if he had returned a beggar or a millionaire.

“About half-and-half, sir,” said Roddy, sitting down with Sally on his knee, cocking her cap still further over her ear. “There! What a rakish girl you are, my little mammy. I have a few pounds in the bank,” he said, looking over her head at Peregrine. “And I have come to beg your signet-ring for Nick Flower. He's dying.”

“My— What insolent nonsense is this, sir?”

“He has a fancy for it. Dying men often have fancies. He's your elder brother,” explained Roddy genially. “Only your father forgot to marry his mother, you see.”

To Jermyn's inexpressible admiration, Peregrine retained sufficient control of himself to send Sally from the room before there was further talk. But Peregrine had to sit down, nor could he keep his eyeglass up. “I—absurd,” he said feebly.

“By Jove! Now I understand,” said Jermyn, truly understanding at last that strange likeness to old John, that strange hate between these two men of the same father. “Of course he is.” Old Sir Roderick had been rather famous in the primrose paths.

“Quite true,” said Roddy, going to his story; ending with: “And as he could never wear that ring while he lived, he wants it to die in. A queer notion, for what's a ring anyway? I told him I was sure you'd send it when you knew the circumstances,” added Roddy, getting up to prowl about and sniff at red roses glowing in a silver bowl.

Years of practice had taught Peregrine concealment of a mind which had learned to work rapidly. He asked: “How many wives does he leave behind?”

“None. Except my grandfather's kind. He has always told me that.”

Peregrine was silent. A sick man's fancy? Flower was too cunning, too hard-headed for that. Either the whole matter was a monstrous lie invented for the further humiliation of Sir Peregrine Lovel or it was a request for recognition, for permission to identify himself with Lovels at the last in order to leave them his vast fortune. A very proper gesture, going far to redeem an evil life.

“What does he offer in exchange?” asked Jermyn, watching Peregrine.

“He would disclose that when he got the ring,” said Roddy, rather indifferent, being intent on arranging a moss rosebud in his buttonhole.

Peregrine sat thinking. “Naturally the ring would return to me at his death?”

“No. He was very decided about that. He wants the heirloom ring that belonged to his father buried with him. To confront the old man with in Hades, he said. Poor chap!” Roddy laughed, then sighed. After all, blood is thicker than water, he thought, wondering why it should have taken Nick Flower, and not Peregrine, to show him that.

Peregrine shut his thin lips tight. Bury the sacred Lovel heirloom with the Lovel bastard! Indecency could go no further. Now he knew why he had so hated this man, feeling his father so often in Nick Flower's hectoring ways. Only the same blood could hate like that, and he had always seen the likeness to John, though never imagining—

He thought again. Naturally there were several signet-rings in the family. Major Henry had one, though he never used it. There was an old ring which had been a grand-uncle's somewhere. If he could find that, probably it would be near enough to deceive a dying man.

“When do you return to Westland?” he asked.

“There's a lugger going down to Lyttelton to-morrow night. A plaguy nuisance one can't get round by Cook Strait, but such a nasty nest of little islands and crosscurrents I never did see.”

“Some of the finest scenery in the world. I'll think this over and let you know, Roddy.”

“I hope you'll send it, sir,” said Roddy, flushing beneath the bronze. “Lovels have done little enough for the poor old chap and … and he does belong. I consider that the only heirloom a man needs is what he carries in his own body, but a sick man's fancy—”

“Must be respected. Quite so,” said Peregrine, stalking away.

“Whoop!” cried Roddy, slapping Jermyn between the shoulders. “He'll do it. More bowels in His Omnipotence than I thought.”

“Much more,” said Jermyn dryly. Peregrine was up to something. He would bamboozle Nick Flower yet. Egad, New Zealand should make him dictator.

Nick Flower was far gone when Roddy brought the ring. Only sheer determination, said the dapper little doctor, was keeping life in the broken body. “A few more hours … if so much.”

Flower, looking eagerly with his narrow eyes, saw a golden Lovel head, such as his own once had been, bright against the window, darker as it stooped low above him.

“My father told me to put the ring on your finger, Uncle Nick,” said Roddy, giving that name to Nick Flower for the first and last time.

“Let me hold it first.”

How the hairs stood out on those great hands, now so pale and feeble, thought Roddy, watching them turning the ring, rubbing it softly between thumb and finger as though they loved it. He could not see, as Flower had been seeing through these long nights on the border-land, bluff Sir Roderick in his red hunting-coat and high white stock stooping through a low door, filling up a dusky little room when he came to fondle the girl whose dark eyes had contrived to hold his heart so much longer than his stately lady at the Hall could do. “Hey, you little rogue. Play with these,” said Sir Roderick, tumbling his gold jingling fob and his ring into the lap of the little boy in the checked frock and pinafore. The little boy had loved them all; but specially he had loved the ring in which the gold held the silky suavity of age, in which the stone had melted into the setting until only the texture told the change. Hatred of Lovels had become a small thing beside a sick man's fancy for wearing that ring at last, thus to challenge old Sir Roderick finally with the heirloom denied so long.

Bewilderedly the feeble hands were recognizing something wrong with the ring. Much new gold Flower had handled of late, and this was new. This ring had never been worn by generations of Lovel men. It was heavier, less rounded by wear. There was a faint edge where the stone sank in…. Flower closed his eyes. Lovels, dishonest to the core, had tricked him. Roddy, for whose sake he had almost forgiven Peregrine, had tricked him. Instead of gay old Sir Roderick, he saw a ghostly Peregrine smiling with black close-set eyes.

“Tell your father,” he said with difficulty, “that I wish to express my feelings to him … and you … in a proper manner….”

“It was little enough to do,” said Roddy, with tears in his eyes.

Indeed it was little enough. Nick Flower sighed, then said sharply: “Bring Draper at once. I want to make my will.”

Now, through the mists surrounding him, he saw Darien with her sunbonnet falling off her red curls, trying on satin slippers in a flax-gully….