Promenade
II
II
Through the grey dawns regiments marched up the Khyber Road and across wet bracken to Manakau Harbour, where boats took them over the bar to waiting ships that would carry them round the rough west coast to New Plymouth. No harbour at New Plymouth but the soldiers wouldn't discover that—and very much else—until they reached it. All the days bugles blew and drums rolled, wagon-wheels rolled going with loads of spades and shovels and drums of nails to build little redoubts, make roads about Auckland.
Caroline started a bandage-class and took her daughters daily to the hospital where they were not welcomed by the military surgeons. Sally and others made blue shirts for the militia; Peregrine was full of speeches, persuading grants out of the Harbour Board and the Council for the Roads, and Darien baulked all attempts of the military to secure John's Clydesdale stallion, imported from Melbourne.
“If you hadn't me to look after you you'd give them everything, you patriotic idiotic darling,” said Darien, stamping about in John's boots, with skirts kilted above her flannel petticoats. Money beyond dreams in stock now, if only John would realize it. With Nick Flower's help she could make a fortune out of this war. But Flower would be in Taranaki making his own fortune; importing, juggling, selling spades, nails, fodder, ammunition to the highest bidder. She called Lucilla, whom Caroline had sent to the farm as chaperon, apparently feeling that no man was safe with Darien. As though she wanted men, who never gave a woman any money, when she could have merinos and Clydesdales, which did. “Wait till I get these boots off, Lu, and I'll give you another curtsy-lesson,” she said. “Get your fan.” Lucilla at fourteen promised to be worth putting another finger in a pie for. Momentarily Darien wondered what was happening in Tiffany's pie. But Tiffy would have to look after herself now. Darien couldn't spare any more time for her.
Sackville's detachment was scheduled to leave on a certain date for New Plymouth, and Tiffany counted the days as they flew past, piling themselves so high with work for him that meetings came but seldom. Dances and routs would soon raise their heads again, the human mind being unconquerably elastic; but in the first flush of excitement blue shirts and long white rolls of bandages were in the ascendant, and ladies tearing up the linen trousseau sheets marked with their maiden names were still in the painful throes of believing that it is more blessed to give than to receive.
Now Dick would be gone in two days, and only once had they met alone since all this grief began, thought Tiffany, singing Moore's “Melodies” with Emily in the Lovel Hall drawing-room (so snug in its warm amber and umber winter coverings) and seeing beyond the open window the young men smoking on the veranda. Dick and Brian and Hew. Dick and Tom Hepburn and Dick—Tiffany gave it up, since the world was only Dick who would so soon be gone, leaving her to face life as best she might. On such desolate seas of helplessness must every woman set sail. It is quite natural that God and Buddha and all the others should be men, she thought, following that out to its logical conclusion.
“If you can't keep tune or time at least you might keep the words,” cried Emily, very plaintive.
And now the men had come in, filling the room with their masculinity; singing, turning compliments (since every young man of fashion must have the parlour graces), being very gay to hide their secret anxiety, while Tiffany and Captain Richard Sackville stole glances, feared to steal words…. I can't bear it. This can't be the end, thought Tiffany.
Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly to-day….
sang Dick in his light gay tenor. And that she simply couldn't bear, rushing from the bright room and the smiling faces, rushing out to the chill autumn scent of dying leaves.
It was there he found her, crouched like a hare in the wet bracken that still held its stand on the rim of the encroaching garden.
“Tiffany?”
Life, Love … what are they but the one when youth lights the torch for passionate hearts at parting?