Promenade
VI
VI
So Roddy joined his brothers under Von Tempsky, and swore at the stark conditions, as they did, and thought a good deal about home and Auckland.
What will become of the John Lovels? always revived a flagging conversation in Auckland; and Peregrine, finding them turn as naturally as sun-flowers towards his aid, was at last moved to write an almost pleading letter to Darien.
“I consider it Belinda's duty to take Emily, who might marry if separated from her surroundings,” he wrote. “If she prove adamant could you not have her yourself? I find the problem of providing for them all peculiarly severe at present, and I see no end to it. No lady can earn a livelihood save by governessing, and none of these is fit even to instruct infants.”
A pretty pass for the great Peregrine Lovel to go begging to Darien, but there was no other way, he thought, quite beside himself and going to collect them at Mrs Pinshon's carpet dance. What malicious fate had made him, once so invulnerable, the squire of such unenviable dames? War was indeed responsible for a great deal.
At the buffet some of his old cronies were very cheerful, with Major Henry beaming and snuffing heartily. “Just in time, my boy. Thatcher is goin' to sing an impromptu about the Kawau Island business,” he cried.
Peregrine wished to hear no more of Kawau Island, where Grey, with his damned soft spot for Maoris, had sent the prisoners languishing on the hulks. So they had escaped, as Grey probably meant them to do, and now would kill all Peregrine's sons. Thatcher, Auckland's popular entertainer, bowed in every direction, and began singing to the tune of “Nelly Gray.”
Oh, ka kino, Hori Grey. For you let us get away,
And you'll never see your Maoris any more.
Much obliged to you we are, and you'll find us in a pa
Rifle-pitted on the Taranaki shore….
Shrieks of laughter, heavy hand-clapping proved the bad odour Grey was in, and Peregrine took his nieces home in a bitter silence unmoved by their chatter.
“La, I vow I must send Thatcher a watch-chain, the odious quiz,” cried Sophia. “He winked at me,” declared Emily, giggling.
Feeling battered all over, Peregrine received a suggestion from Sally grimly. Sally thought Caroline might be persuaded to take boarders … gentlemen only.
“It is the gentlemen who would not be persuaded,” said Peregrine. But he looked grateful as she brought him cakes and wine. Something it undoubtedly was to have the refreshment of this sweet gentle Sally between the buffets of Fate, he thought, going down to Parliament for further buffeting.
Members of both its branches were chiefly scions of aristocrat stock, yet they appeared to have brains, although ill-directed. Feverishly they were moving divisions, passing laws for the confiscation of millions of acres of Maori land (when they could get it). Since England, enraged and denunciatory from end to end, was refusing to pay more than half the costs, selling land to settlers would put a few drops in the bucket of the colony's empty treasury. And Grey was always clamouring for money.
“Do you realize that I am responsible to England although you hold the purse?” he cried.
“Take the damn purse. There's nothing in it,” replied the members.
Papers talked of near 20,000 men under arms, what with Regulars, Constabulary, Militia, Volunteers, and Artillery. “The Maori fighting force is estimated as well under 3000. Truly we have reason to be proud of ourselves,” remarked the Chronicle, driving Peregrine into such a rage that he cut Jermyn dead, promenading with Sally in the Gardens. Twenty, thirty, forty years, went Sally's reluctant feet, taking her away from Jermyn standing so lonely under a tree. Never never would she run on the hills and dance in the sun with Jermyn….
“Pray keep step, my dear,” said Mr Lovel, staidly pacing.
To Sally waiting for the rare letters from her children, they all seemed so far away that they were often near, as the dead may be. She could near Tiffy singing down the stair, catch a gleam of Roddy's fair head among the laburnum-trees, feel Jerry's hearty kiss dropped on her forehead as she sat sewing of evenings while the clock ticked Du-ty, Du-ty so loudly in the silence. If only Jermyn would come, she thought, afraid to look at the clock, which never forgot that it was a wedding present.
Down at the Institute Corny Fleete was translating the Maori “Marseillaise,” lately inspired by their distresses and destined to be the heart-song of their race for generations.
“Ka ngapu te whenua,” began Corny, interpreting: “The earthquake shakes our land. Where shall we find an abiding place? Hold fast our land, nor let it from our grasp be torn….”
There was a deal more, embarrassing to gentlemen disliking to be compared with earthquakes … which New Zealand certainly knew something about, although not very seriously; and young Charles Macrae, meeting rows of beetling brows, declared that we were taking quite the wrong way with the Maoris, gentlemen.
“They are as fine a race as ourselves, and even the regular soldiers know it now,” said young Macrae, who had lately married the daughter of a friendly chief in church.
And he was not the only one. Something mysteriously attractive to young men in the texture of these high-born Maori maidens, whom they were now meeting for the first time; in their quiet soft wistfulness, as though unconscious flesh and bone remembered the glories of their ages past. The eternal quest for the unknown, it may have been, such as raped the Sabine women while fairer mates stood by.
Thumping his eternal umbrella Sir Winston proclaimed his predilection for English blood. “‘Rule, Britannia,’” he cried.
“Good Lord, we're so sick of this war,” protested a captain, who had strayed in. “Half of us feel it's unjust, and we all loathe killing Maoris.”
“I've killed a Maori,” said Corny, who had been partly drunk ever since he did it. “Killed my own son Hori six weeks ago. Swore I'd kill 'em all … gone Maori … renegades to my blood…. God save the Queen,” quavered Corny, trying to stand, and failing.
“There, there,” said Major Henry, patting the bowed shoulder. “Forget it, old man. Forget it.” Corny had lived with Maoris too long. Utu to that extent was quite unnecessary, since everywhere half-caste sons were fighting against their relations, and more than a few white men fighting with the Maoris.
The real renegades, thought Major Henry, were the white men who were smuggling in cannon and teaching the Maori how to load them with the lengths of heavy bullock-chain that did such unpleasant damage, buying quantities of tea-chest lead from traders in order to run bullets, helping make the stinking black gun-powder to eke out the Maori supply.
Hemi, now in the bush with his men, sometimes bought flax-kits filled with bullets out of Nick Flower's long canoe on the slow-moving rivers. Once he sat with him over a camp-fire. Flower had just cut his way through an old track overgrown with the tough supple-jack loops, the springy kia-kia that reaches from tree to tree and bursts into little palms in the fork of every branch, and the lawyer-vine with its little hooks set at such a spiteful angle, and he rubbed the blood from his arms, saying in his sneering way:
“With all the bush fighting for you, why aren't you doing better? Where are your mantles and mats now, Hemi Fleete?”
The kingite faction among the Maoris had crowned their king with the prayer that “the religion of Christ shall be the mantle of your protection; the Law shall be the mat for your feet for evermore.” But of what use were prayers now, thought Hemi, blazing out: “Why are you here? Why do you not go to your kind?”
“I do when I want them. I've no more cause to love them than you have.”
Hemi blinked at a lace-fungus bluely phosphorescent in the high fork of a tree. His long love for Tihane was as far-off and unearthly as the fungus, and he had killed many white men. But there had never been another woman like Tihane, although he had taken wives as a young chief must. Sons of his own in the pa now, binding him closer in the bonds that he so hated.
A tall rata branched above the fire. Is there anywhere, thought Hemi, treachery like the rata vine nosing along the ground to some proud tree, climbing with soft ten-drils that grow strangling-strong on the life-blood of its host so that after years the enclosing arms drop off, letting the poor squeezed skeleton of a tree fall, and the rata stands alone, a haughty murderer tossing scarlet plumes against the sky.
“That is what the pakeha will do to the Maori,” said Nick Flower, following Hemi's thought. Then he went away and sat like a king above his Maori rowers in the long canoe. So he came in a night or two on a camp of fighting Rangers, bringing welcome information, finding Brian Lovel there.
In the red flicker of the camp-fires great branches looked like tents, polished leaves made continual dance and flicker. Squatting round the fires, men were singing “My Old Kentucky Home” and “We are tenting to-night on the old camp-ground.” No need for caution now that Cameron would have his whole force here to-morrow or next day. “Nice to be out of this,” said Brian.
“Some Auckland girl will probably agree,” said Flower. And then Brian remembered Tiffany and asked for the name of the priest who had married her to Captain Sackville. Flower lit his pipe slowly.
“I don't know it,” he said at last.
“But … this is most extraordinary, sir,” cried Brian, turning red.
“Why?” Flower was guarded now. So there had been trouble?
“It is believed that the man was not licensed to perform the ceremony.”
“Like enough.” Flower's nerves, always so steady, did not betray him now. The wheel had swung full circle, had it? Peregrine Lovel's daughter was no better than Flower's mother had been. The deep warp of a lifetime began to supple, to straighten out. “Has Sackville married her again?”
“No. He … he's returned with his regiment to England.”
“Then she's well rid of a hound.” Thinking of Darien he began to laugh. How furious she would be, her red curls on end.
“This is no jest, sir,” cried Brian, jumping up, looking so like Peregrine. “Do you not realize that you have laid yourself open to a criminal prosecution?”
“Your father is likely to prosecute, ain't he?”
Brian was silent. Flower had gone straight to the weak spot, for all Lovels were engaged in trying to cushion this scandal. He felt there was more to be said, but he did not know how to say it. He hesitated. “Cowardly skulking dog!” he cried ineffectually, and walked away.
Nick Flower laughed gustily, going down to his canoe on the river. He was not minded to explain anything to Peregrine Lovel's pup. But sliding over the quiet water to the dip-dip of the paddles he began to grow concerned about Darien, who would demand many explanations. To say he hadn't been sure would not help him with Darien, who (conscienceless little pirate though she was) had always been straight. She probably forgave, even enjoyed as a tribute, his madness that night. But she wouldn't forgive what she must take as a deliberate insult. Hell, what made me such a fool, he thought. And he had felt himself so clever…. Yet Darien, receding into the distance, was dearer than she had been. “Get along, can't you?” he cried to his men, feeling himself chasing Darien.