Once a man wrote: “The Great Result is the total of innumerable acts of self-control.” But the two men meeting at night in Peregrine Lovel's office knew that already, though Flower had learned in an infinitely harder school than Peregrine.

Coming among Peregrine's elegant props to gentility (fine walnut desk with brass inkpot and calfbound ledgers, fine leather chair behind it, fine bronze bust of Cicero in the narrow mantel), Flower thought with some amusement of his own office, littered with wooden stools, worn velvet chairs, gay prints of women on the dirty walls, the big iron safe in the corner, a tattooed Maori head holding down an untidy pile of lists and charge-sheets. His mind ran easily down a dozen greased grooves.

Peregrine had but the one groove—his own advancement. No flexibility about Peregrine, who had probably asked Flower here to buy him off the Council. Not so easy, my proud cock, thought Flower, leaning his broad shoulders against the wall, since he had not been offered a chair, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his old mole-skin trousers.

Peregrine, prim in his leather chair behind the desk, felt the revolt in his fastidious soul rising. The thing was impossible. Even the man's thick neck rising above the unbuttoned collar of his blue shirt forbade it. Through this agonized week Peregrine had repeatedly told himself so … and found it quite as impossible to leave the matter there. Caroline had been so explicit; women were page 189 so unaccountable; the Lovel honour was at stake. He moved his dry hand among the sedately-feathered pens laid in a row, cleared his dry throat.

“I desire to know, Mr Flower, which member of my household you are in the habit of visiting during the evenings when I am from home.”

Long-cultivated instinct controlled Flower's start, prompted the oblique answer. “Why not ask the members of your household, Mr Lovel?”

“I prefer to ask you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Flower's quick wits had got their bearings already. Only one fear could make that lean face so ghastly within the ring of candle-light. Some man visited Peregrine Lovel's wife, and he had been mistaken for the man. By whom? More here than he could see yet, but he would find out presently.

“Kindly answer my question, Mr Flower.”

“I imagine you've answered it yourself, haven't you?”

Peregrine made a movement, sat back because he could not trust his legs. Nor his voice either, for a moment.

“I await your explanation.”

Flower was thinking fast. So the little saint wasn't a saint but just a weak woman like the rest of 'em? He didn't blame her. He never blamed women who had so much to fight. He had even a mind to save her for her lover if he could do it and plague Peregrine at the same time.

“I think my explanation is one you should not have needed, sir. If I have come to see Mrs Lovel it could be only to seek her aid. Such a lady is above suspicion.”

Peregrine felt the drops springing on his forehead with relief and fury. Did this low churl presume to teach him his duty? He said thinly:

“You have done your best to place her under suspicion. May I ask why you time your visits on the nights when I am away from home?”

page 190

Flower began to smile. How easily Peregrine had dropped into the trap.

“I knew you didn't like me. You don't, do you?”

The glare from those narrow eyes confirmed that.

“I find it difficult to conceive any circumstance which would move Mrs Lovel to render aid to you, sir.”

So? The windmill had gone round, had it? His Omniscience, so lately caught by the wool, was becoming himself again. Flower looked down at the ring glittering on that lean hand. So much he could say if he had a mind to. But the little saint should enjoy her lover, though already he felt a strange desolation in that. There, he had thought, was the one good woman in a world of shams….

“I have a daughter who is a great anxiety to me. Mrs Lovel, who helps so many, has been good enough to help her.”

“Did you take her with you on your visits?”

“Your informant must have told you that.”

Difficult sailing here with so much in the dark. Flower puzzled over it, came a little nearer the truth. Some tattling woman had heard voices, built up a story calculated to inflame Lovel's easy jealousy. But why choose him, who was so outside the pale? Had the little saint done it herself, hoping to throw dust? It seemed likely. Lord, what clever unscrupulous devils women are.

Peregrine sat silent. The shock administered by Caroline had so disintegrated him that it was hard to get into his mould again. This last week had been particularly exhausting with the elections. If he had been less occupied with them he would at once have seen the impossibility of the story; of Sally, so dainty, so delicate-minded, in commerce with this coarse fellow. He burned with shame at having been so fooled; welcomed the consciousness of his own worth, of Lovel inviolability coming back.

“I accept your explanation,” he said loftily. “It is page 191 probable that you are incapable of realizing that you have behaved with an impertinence and indiscretion barely credible. Look after your daughter yourself in future, Mr Flower, and remember that your acquaintance with Mrs Lovel has ceased.”

“Will you tell her so?”

“That is my affair. Good night.”

Mr Peregrine Lovel of Lovel Hall, secure again upon his pedestal. Flower watched him with sharp eyes. How easy, how delightful to knock him off it. But let the play go on. Let young Jermyn Lovel, who had babbled so much more than he knew to a man who could put two and two together, carry his fair-faced saint further down the underground ways. No women worth saving, but this man whom Flower so hated was worth wrecking. Let the wrecking go on.

“Good night, sir,” he said civilly. “Sorry to have given trouble. We'll meet again at the Council.”

II

By skilful expenditure of tact and money Peregrine shortly manoeuvred his way into the Provincial Council on a by-election, and won a parliamentary seat without opposition. Parliament, it appeared, was not such a plum as one had hoped; for, though representative, it was not to be responsible, since ministers were appointed by the Crown and therefore not responsible to anybody in New Zealand. So we'll do what we can with the Councils, said councillors, tucking in their shirts and preparing to annex all the local power possible.

Linda was to come out at the ball which, it was expected, would set the first Parliament steadily on its feet; and Tiffany, spending the afternoon at Caroline's, felt desolately how this collection of females oppressed her … all binding purple sarsenet on five mustard-colour silk rep flounces, each ten yards long, for Aunt Caroline to page 192 present Linda in. “I hope five will be enough,” said Caroline thoughtfully. For such an occasion six might have been more respectful, but there were eleven frills to be done for Linda yet.

The growing rebel in Tiffany rebelled. Was there nothing for women but sewing and marrying and going on sewing? Even mamma was always at it. Tiffany, trying to hold infinity in the palm of her hand, was finding all the religions of little assistance now. It was not on record that Buddha ever had to sew. Linda (whose waist was still eighteen inches, though one had hopes of these new jean stays which were very strong) twittered excitedly through the days, consulted Tiffany later in the bedroom. Should she burst on her public dashing and offhand like Diana Vernon, or tender and drooping like Clarissa … whose woes she wept oceans over?

Tiffany didn't know. Either would be so funny in round pink Linda with her china-blue eyes and fluffy flaxen ringlets like a doll.

“Oh,” said Linda who was always saying “Oh” to keep her mouth small. “I wonder what you do know, miss.”

“Nothing,” said Tiffany, enjoying foolish Linda.

Tiffany went home in the condition in which Caroline's family usually left her, and sought consolation from Roddy. But he had none to give since (having lately shot up like a may-pole) Peregrine had considered him capable of taking Linda in to next week's dinner. Never too young to learn how to conduct yourself in public, said papa, who had been so much more genial lately that Tiffany declared he was going to be ill. “So unnatural. I do wish I could just once see papa's mind with its clothes off,” said Tiffany.

Roddy thought that once would be enough. Tiffy with her dancing eyes and unruly hair and damask cheeks was always indulging in mental saturnalias, and later he wished he had her beside him at the dinner, instead of page 193 picking up Linda's gloves and handkerchief every few minutes while so busy learning how gentlemen conducted themselves. “Couldn't you pin them on or something, Linda?” he asked.

“Oh,” cried Linda, rounding her mouth. “You shocking quiz!”

In this May of 1854, with the first Parliament opening on the twenty-seventh, gentlemen were conducting themselves so gaily that even Peregrine's austere table became near a riot, with Dr Logan Campbell (who had discovered Auckland before it was Auckland) asserting that with thirty-one thousand people in the country we could do anything … and would; and Jermyn wanting to toast England for cutting New Zealand's throat by allowing her to manage herself at the age of fourteen.

“Huzzah for impending rumpusses,” cried Jermyn, tossing back the thick hair that Tiffany called his lion's mane, tossing off his wine.

“With no roads and over two thousand miles of coastline in the North Island alone we shall never manage without steamers,” declared Peregrine (although conscious of a present disability to design steamers). “The Blackball Line … the White Star Line bringing cargo from England in the incredibly short space of two months … who are we to withstand Providence, although I am convinced that for many years there will be demand for the very excellent sailing-ships from the yards of the Antipodes.”

Peregrine's periods usually sounded as though they should close with an Amen. So Jermyn said it, looking at Sally. To him, as to other storm-tossed souls, had come a pause, a temporary acceptance of this sweet dark waiting-time bridged so secretly by looks alone. Already he had the essential Sally. Fate, slow-moving, eternal, would soon complete the gift, thought Jermyn with a young man's inability to conceive denials.

Caroline, who could never let well enough alone, re- page 194 gretted that Governor Grey had gone on holiday at the end of last year, since Lieutenant-Governor Wynyard, Superintendent of Auckland and senior military officer of the colony, seemed to be governing even worse … if possible.

“Holiday, madam? He ran away, the dog!” cried Major Henry, turning as scarlet as his waistcoat. “He dassent face the Councils and the Parliament … nor the Taranaki Maoris, neither.”

The Taranaki Maoris were likely to require some facing presently, having established their own Land League and built themselves a lordly pleasure house reinforced with dozens of huge wooden statues with tongues out and echoing to the Lord only knew what seditious talk.

“Our Titans will soon tread them down,” said Jermyn, blandly watching the Titans staying themselves on roast chicken and sausage-rolls in preparation for the effort.

“It is to be hoped Governor Wynyard will do something,” said Caroline, quite haggard with the struggle to stop Linda from eating. Those jean stays—

“Governor Wynyard, madam,” retorted Major Henry, “having absorbed all the principal posts in the colony, is so continuously employed in writing to himself in his various capacities that he has no time for anything else.”

“Here wells of oily eloquence in soft meanders lubricate the course they take'—Cowper,” said. Sir Winston.

“Wynyard's course will soon bring us all to the gallows,” remarked Corny. “As for that shockin' wharf in Queen Street, Lovel, it will drown us. I ask you, as President of the Harbour Board, what the engineers meant by puttin' up a thing like a broken redoubt designed by maniacs.”

“Probably they didn't mean anything. Most people don't,” said Jermyn and turned the talk to the Taranaki Maoris, saying:

“I don't blame them. They are losing both land and page 195 race. One has seen the exact parallel in the United States among the Indians. But the Maoris stand together like Highland clans….”

“Look like it too. Magnificent fellows,” said Colonel Carey. “If we only understood 'em a bit better. But we never will.”

There's one of your interpreters, thought Jermyn, glancing at flushed wide-eyed Roddy. But it seemed that only the old who have lost their imagination—or never had it—can manage a country. So he let the ladies go, and sang to Sally later in the drawing-room, with Linda (all pink puffs and maiden protests at being pushed to the piano by Caroline) scrambling after the right notes and sometimes catching them.

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night….

sang Jermyn, getting so much into the arising that young ladies (whose mammas had almost given him up, but the young are ever more hopeful) produced filmy handkerchiefs, feeling how ready they were to be in the dreams of this shocking rake, Jermyn Lovel. Sally, thought Jermyn, looked like a rather sad little nymph caught by a mortal—if one could think of Peregrine as anything so normal. Do you guess how often I dream of you, Sally?

“Naughty man,” cried Caroline, tapping him with a fan sprouting with puce feathers. “You have moved us all with that mellow voice of yours. I always think it is as mellow as … as anything. That will do, Linda. Captain O'Reilly and I are going to sing a duet.”

Caroline's loud crashes with the pedal down were even more discomposing to the company than Linda's frantic chases. Gentlemen looked restive, longing for their pipes. Ladies smiled politely. Young ladies giggled discreetly together in corners. If this is Society, thought Roddy, page 196 sitting miserably on the edge of his chair, I don't wonder Tiffy doesn't want to grow up.

“O come, my love. Come. Come. Come,”

shouted O'Reilly, trying to overtake Caroline who had come much too fast.

III

New Zealand papers (and it was perhaps the only subject on which they ever agreed) were going mad in efforts to express their opinions of Grey and their dread lest Wynyard—who couldn't be expected to know anything about government—should utterly destroy them. Grey, as every Tom, Dick and Harry knew, or ought to, had sacrificed the country's national advancement for his own, and then run for it. So now there was no pilot, said the gentlemen buttoning up their coats, and, damme, we will pilot it ourselves.

“Governor Wynyard will, do well to forget Grey's rulings,” said the Chronicle acidly. “In case it has escaped his notice we suggest that it would be well to give settlers possession of the land they have bought, instead of taking away what they already hold. Titles can never be cleared. A man's word must be the bond in both races, and since Grey has overruled that who can blame the Maoris for saying: ‘If a governor so juggles with his own race what will he do with ours?’”

That was unjust to Grey, protested John, who had come in for the parliamentary opening; to Grey who really had tried to arbitrate between angry chiefs who had sold rich pastures in the early days for an iron pot or two and chiefs who were now getting something like the real worth of it.

Providence, it appeared, had no sympathy with the first Parliament, which opened under avalanches of rain; with wet flags demoralized about their poles and letting their colours run anywhere; with booming guns muffled by the storm, and ladies' heads muffled by the shawls page 197 which persistently blew over them; with gentlemen doing Herculean things with umbrellas, making speeches, making enemies. There were sergeants-at-arms, maces, a speaker, and members from the other provinces, who might well have been denizens of another planet for all Auckland knew of them, or wanted to know. It was scandalous that such foreigners should presume to meddle with New Zealand's destiny, and Peregrine was not the only man determined that it must not be allowed.

“Of all man's miraculous mistakes this bears the palm'—Young,” declared Sir Winston, asking coldly, at sight of a breezy gentleman with a little beard and a large tie: “Who is this Fitzgerald of Canterbury?”

Soon everybody knew. He was not only authors of The Night Watch, but the most brilliant and argumentative of them all, slashing Peregrine's carefully prepared periods to ribbons, holding the Attorney-General up to derision on the point of his sharp lance.

“They'll agree like a basket of cats,” remarked Jermyn, seeing members take their places; and indeed quarrels soon smoked to high heaven and the very air smelt of burning. Each province, so widely dissimilar in its wants, fought fiercely for all it could get; although nervous ladies, inviting these strange wild Goths to parties, found them so charming that secretly they doubted the wisdom of their husbands more than ever. People passing Parliament House heard such repercussions that they halted in eager expectation of the collapse of those frail wooden walls, and the Southern Cross cried frantically:

“The long-expected storm has burst and there is worse to come.”

It was openly said that Wakefield—the scoundrel responsible for the New Zealand Company—wrote all Governor Wynyard's speeches for him; and there was no use in Sir John Lovel and other fools asserting that if Wakefield hadn't forced England's hand we wouldn't belong to her now. “Who wants to belong to England?” page 198 cried distracted members, who couldn't forget that they were provincial councillors first, needing special grants for tunnels in Canterbury, railways in Dunedin, wharves in Wellington, Auckland, and elsewhere.

When, after locking the doors against interruption, New Zealand's first Parliament prorogued itself in a furious climax of despair, Jermyn wrote for the Chronicle: “In order to constitute a session it is necessary that one bill should pass in both houses. After sitting two and a half months our Parliament as achieved this. It has produced a bill authorizing the sale of liquor within its own precincts.”

Peregrine was so mortified that he stayed at home, which made life very difficult for his family. But after some consideration members got under way again and, desiring to go home, passed a few bills in a hurry and decided to leave legislating alone for a year or two. It had been an embarrassing experience. Actually, thought these lusty pioneers, so eager for their own way since they never had been allowed it before, this fiasco indicated that if they really wanted a Parliament they must combine instead of engaging solely in shouting each other down.

After his first shocked surprise at this revelation Peregrine accepted it and prepared to trim his sails. He had learned a good deal that would be useful later, and (although still rather giddy) he remained lord of his own hearth. So he instructed Sally to prepare for Roddy such garments as would be suitable for farm life.

“I am sending you out to your Uncle John to learn about land and stock, Roddy. Then you shall go to Canterbury, where I have bought land upon the Plains, for I intend you to become one of New Zealand's greatest sheep-kings. There's a career for you, my boy,” said Peregrine with the air of conferring a crown.

Sally looked in terror on Roddy springing up from the window-seat where he had been dreaming; hearing, she page 199 knew, dim echoes of elfin horns, seeing faint and lovely visions such as only youth can know. Always she was afraid for Roddy, living in his own pure world of beauty, touching the life about him with finger-tips, with the edges of his glances. Now he was crying like a frightened child:

“Oh, I couldn't. Oh, please, sir, I don't … I'd hate it so.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Peregrine, suddenly tremendous. “Are you presuming to question my ruling?”

“I … I don't want to go on a farm,” said Roddy, feeling sick just to think of the lusty smells of sheep, of cows, of pigs. With his head up like that he was near as tall as Mr Lovel. But oh, his dear young limbs were so slender and unset. Not a fair fight, thought Sally, flinging herself desperately on the spears.

“Oh, please, Mr Lovel, isn't there anything else … ?”

“Are you defying me, Roddy?” asked Peregrine, not even hearing Sally. By his expression he might have been seeing life as an excellent oil-painting and suddenly discovered it to be an oleograph.

“I loathe sheep,” said Roddy helplessly. Oh God, what could he say, with the earth so sliding away under his feet? Life was such a delight of little paths. Riding to school like Lancelot on the Quest of the Holy Grail; lying in the fern-gully where the warmth and the bird-twitter and Tiffy singing soft Maori waiatas lifted him on the shoulders of the world to enchanted horizons; calling with his flute to the sea which answered with a song stranger, more compelling than the song of the sirens to Ulysses….

“Go to your room,” said Peregrine coldly, “and thank God that you have a father with common sense, even if you have none. Probably you will inherit the title. Eventually—through my unwearied efforts—you will be a very rich man. There is a future before you which most young men would give their heads for … and you tell me you page 200 hate sheep,” he cried, abandoning dignity for righteous fury. “You damned empty-headed young imbecile! By the Lord, I'll hammer that nonsense out of you! Go to your room.”

“Oh, please,” cried Sally, quite reckless for Roddy, “isn't there … Jermyn thinks Roddy has genius, perhaps …”

She could not have said anything which revolted Peregrine more. Lovels, whatever their faults, had always been gentlemen.

“Do you wish to drive me mad? My son a long-haired stroller always in ladies' pockets? My son? I'll tell John to put him with the working-men in the whare. That will make a man of him, perhaps,” declared Peregrine, marching out. What, he felt almost passionately, was Providence about to afflict him with such a family? Not an ounce of sense in the lot of 'em, except Brian with his quick black eyes and long clever head. And that oaf Roddy had to be the head of the Lovels and hold the result of all Peregrine's long years of labour in his silly hands….

“Where the devil are you going, sir?” demanded Peregrine, whose great strides had carried him fast over the windy hill into Commercial Bay and bang into Major Henry. Here's another fool, thought Peregrine, bitterly aware that the world held far too many.

The Major (who had had a few at the Empire tavern) stopped with the puggaree on his tall hat blowing in the wind, the shawl blowing on his shoulders. An agitated Major, seemingly going to pieces in all directions and crying out to Peregrine:

“So your boats are landing smuggled goods all along the coasts, sir. You should cushion the matter better. This won't teach your Punch-and-Judy Parliament to respect you.”

“In what harbour-side brothel did you hear that?” asked Peregrine, becoming calm in the face of danger.

“I can give you the names of the shipmasters. You page 201 don't drink enough with anyone to find out anything,” declared Major Henry, proudly conscious that nobody could accuse him of that lack. “Your friend Flower has been arranging the matter for you.”

“Come in here,” commanded Peregrine. Flower was a continual pea in Peregrine's shoe, thought the Major, following into the low tavern, where the sanded floor smelled of tobacco-quids and stale liquor. Peregrine ordered brandy in a private room and produced his notebook. “Now, sir?” he said.

That was exactly Peregrine—disassociating himself from murky knowledge, pinning a man down to facts. But the Major had 'em … one or two anyway. A sailor who didn't consider he was getting his share of the loot had talked, and half the shady side of Auckland was diligently spreading the news.

“Afraid the murder's out, boy … unless you can get Jermyn to whitewash you in the Chronicle….”

But this, it appeared, was quite the wrong word. Whatever Peregrine needed—and he did look as though needing something—it was not whitewashing. Nor, he implied, would any amount of it save Nick Flower now.

“Kindly bring the man to my office at once, Major … if he is sufficiently sober,” said Peregrine, always with that thin edge of a sneer. Again, thought the Major, going away deflated, his Omnipotence carried off the honours. It was pleasant to remember some of the things they had done to him in the Parliament.

Up in Peregrine's house Sally, beginning to cry, had put her tender arms round Roddy's neck.

“Roddy dear … it may be only for a little while, Roddy.”

“Yes, mamma,” said Roddy tonelessly. He kissed her with cold lips, walked off with his thin shoulders squared. What could old old persons who had no sorrows know of the anguish in his heart? Even Tiffy couldn't understand, page 202 for she loved animals. But to Roddy they were all Circe's pigs looking at him with captive haunted eyes….

IV

Pardonably stimulated by the consciousness that they had got through their first Parliament without murder pioneers began to talk familiarly of Steam. Steam would drive piles for such a wharf as the various lines of steamers now beginning to call regularly could visit without turning the air blue with curses. Steam might even tear down these abominable spurs jabbing into Auckland harbour in all directions, to the great detriment of expansion.

Yet stone walls, post-and-rails, and hawthorn hedges enabled the town to sprawl for over a mile across the Isthmus, assisted by grass and clover paddocks domestic with herds. So Forts Britomart and Albert became sturdy bones of contention. Being in the town centre, cried gentlemen, they would assuredly draw the fire of hungry nations coming to grab this Pearl of the Ocean, as it was now correct to call New Zealand, never forgetting to allude to governors as the swine.

For ladies there were weightier matters, since a hardware firm had lately imported from Birmingham a curious instrument called a chainstitch sewing-machine, renting it out to enterprising females who seldom found their seams come undone if only they remembered to tie the ends properly. Caroline hired the machine for three days, and Sophia won respect for the first time by never forgetting to tie the ends.

So many ravishing materials now—cashmeres, merinos, poplins, moires antiques, crapes, taffetas in strong bright colours—brought by the steamers who would forget how poor Auckland really was; and gentlemen were daily tempted by plush and satin vests, Berlin smoking-caps, Boswell's Life of Johnson, Mr Dickens, and especially Jane Eyre—not considered suitable for females although unfortunately produced by one.

page 203

So now Caroline could contrive more gowns for Linda, taking her to walk in search of a husband through the Government House Gardens when the band played. Linda, all a bright bubble with excitement, had really weathered her first ball with honour, and knocked over several very young subalterns with her giggles and her round eyes and mouth of delight. Detrimentals, thought Caroline, anxiously warning them off. Really the military were all detrimental until you got as high as majors, who were usually otherwise disposed of, thought Caroline, being so voluptuously cordial to majors that several were forced to hide behind the tree-boles. And here was Major Henry, who was of no use at all though naturally charmed with Linda in a set-back blue bonnet and blue silk brides hanging over flaxen ringlets.

“Well, miss,” said the Major with his best bow, “whose heart did you break last with your pretty pug's tricks?”

“Oh, fie, sir! The child don't begin to think of such things yet. La, the crowd here to-day makes me feel quite conspicuous. Let us find a quiet corner,” cried Caroline, plumping down on a seat in the centre of the lawn.

“What a charming tune the band plays,” she added, retrieving the Major as he tried to edge away.

“La Figlia del Regimento,” cried Linda, sighing to feel how painfully she was in love with all the military. Lieutenant Silk had written her a sonnet comparing her to a Dresden China Shepherdess—which proved how upset the poor man was, and if he didn't shortly ask mamma Linda felt she'd die. “Being in love is the greatest joy in life. I hope I may never be out of it,” she had written a dozen times in her diary, conscious that though the object might have to change with the constant changing of regiments the sentiment could still remain the same.

“The parent stem supported by its bud,” declared Sir Winston, who wanted to speak to Major Henry. “Gad, madam, how do you manage to keep off the bees?”

page 204

“Go away, you naughty man,” said Caroline, making room for him beside her, since the presence of a few gentlemen often encouraged the shyer of their sex. “Who is that dark young man in tweeds just passing?”

“Aha! Imagination's airy wing repress when you speak of him,” said Sir Winston, letting both his own fly. “That's Andrew Greer—one of Canterbury's richest sheep-kings.”

Caroline went almost pale with agitation. Here was Linda's husband come just like a bolt from the blue, she felt; and she plunged into a perfect foam of questions, while Lieutenant Silk tentatively aproached and (seeing Caroline so occupied) took the few inches of seat beside Belinda and presently took also the plump little mittened hand straying under her shawl.

“Major, did you hear that some Canterbury feller, John Deans by name, has imported a vehicle with springs? A dog-cart,” cried Sir Winston, endeavouring to shelve Caroline who swallowed lies so fast that it was quite exhausting to supply them. “What are we about that we can't make roads fit for springs?”

“Here's our Town Council Chairman. Ask him,” said Major Henry, bowing to Sally approaching with Peregrine.

“Why ain't our roads fit for springs, sir?” demanded Sir Winston, thumping his umbrella. “Why are they all like Dante's Inferno, doose take 'em?”

Peregrine found Sir Winston in a tight grey frock over a very spotted orange satin waistcoat topped off by a royal-blue tie almost as offensive as his words. Distantly he requested his friend to remember that there were already five miles of macadam in the direction of New-market, and that Auckland's Provincial Council had lately paid a subsidy of $P$5,000 for a monthly mail service from Sydney. In the present state of the country one could not expect miracles.

Under cover of the noise Lieutenant Silk was whispering: “You are so lovely, you know. I … I know I have page 205 no money or … or anything … but you are so lovely. If you could smile on me—”

“I do,” whispered Linda, doing it as far as her round button of a mouth allowed.

“Oh, my angel. You are my angel, you know. D-do you think … if I might call to-night on your mamma?”

“To-morrow night. Papa will be home then,” murmured Linda. Papa, though not much of a buffer, was better than none.

“Come, my love,” said Caroline, finding the gentlemen so deeply sunk in the re-opening of the Coromandel gold-fields (Bishop Selwyn having gone down with the Governor and Judge Martin to interview the Maoris) that there were no more grains of knowledge for her. She favoured Lieutenant Silk with a stony glare, pinched Linda's arm under her shawl.

“No making eyes at that creature, you minx.”

“Oh, la! I wouldn't think of it, mamma,” cried Linda in a panic. The lieutenant would have to stand on his own feet and wits if he wanted to secure Linda.

“Gold! There ain't enough gold to put in your eye … and the country just about ready to go berserk,” vociferated Sir Winston.

“If you will come down and see the samples in my office,” said Peregrine, very courteous, “I think I can convince you to the contrary.” Seven-and-a-half million pounds worth of gold was to come out of that Thames district in the next fifty years, but unfortunately Peregrine could not foresee it, any more than he foresaw what he was doing when he summoned Jermyn to take Sally home…. “If you will be good enough … important business….”

So it was Fate, opening the starry door into the unknown, placing Sally's trembling fingers on Jermyn's arm, enfolding them with her warm flowing robes as they walked in silence back to the silent house. With Roddy page 206 gone Sally had found something alien in the house, as though it reproached her, like Tiffany's accusing eyes, for not standing by her children. But she had no power. It was only men who had power, thought Sally, feeling the house quite obliterated by this strange tight atmosphere which Jermyn had brought into it. In the pretty dim room of chintzes and flowers she laid aside bonnet and shawl, pulled gloves from hands suddenly grown so weak while Jermyn stood watching in an intense concentration that seemed drawing her soul out to meet it. She must break the spell.

“Oh, Jermyn, what can I do for poor Roddy?”

“You can do nothing for him,” said Jermyn. “You know very well that you can do nothing for any of them. What is done they must do for themselves. And you must do for yourself what you can if you want to save your soul alive. You must take from me all I can give, now.”

Oh, this human will! Hard as iron in Mr Lovel, so weak with doubts and longings and griefs in Sally … what was it in Jermyn? He held her closely now, speaking with a quiet sense of deep possession as though he knew her struggles were ended.

“I don't ask you to come away with me yet. That later. But neither of us is young now and we have missed so much. We must not miss any more. There is such a thing as relative values, dear. You may feel your duty to Peregrine, but do you owe me nothing after all these years?”

“Oh, I know … I … I do beg your pardon, Jermyn. But you have my … my very heart….” All that she had, all that was beautiful she had given him so long ago.

“I want more than that, Sally.”

There were strange ghosts moving in the dim room now. Those old gods … chaos behind the gods … was there God or nothingness behind that? Lightnings ran through her, warning her that this enforced calm of years was only crust above the fires of the essential Sally. And Jermyn was breaking through the crust, calling that page 207 starved lonely Sally up and out to all the gay rampageous loveliness of life….She put her hands up to enclose his face, and as she did so it seemed that a veil fell, and she saw beyond.

“Oh!” she gasped, covering her own face instead. No words, no earthly words to tell Jermyn how she had seen that bright beckoning vision wisp into blackness and fly on the wind, leaving her naked with Jermyn on the edge of nothingness. Eternal life which for so long had taken for its symbol Jermyn's shape would be annihilated if she touched it here. So much she knew, sobbing: “No, no. Never. Oh, I can't….” But these were not the words for Jermyn, asking in a strange voice:

“What do you mean? Do you mean that you want no more than this?”

No more? She could not speak, nodding her head.

“Listen to me, Sally. Are you sending me away?”

So it meant that? Again she nodded. Then she couldn't bear it. “Not f-for Eternity. We can have that.”

The word seemed to touch a spring, explode a mine in him. He did not rage and stamp as Mr Lovel occasionally did. His voice was low and very steady; an unending stream of red-hot lava let loose from his white lips, pouring over her, beating her down until she sank on a faldstool, her face hidden in her hands.

So this was woman, said Jermyn. Sucking a man dry, drawing the best of his life away for years and years … vampires sucking a man's soul out … giving nothing in return but words. What was Eternity to him, who didn't believe in it? Sally knew he didn't believe in it, and yet she had let him keep on, hoping, trusting…. A cat with a mouse … (finding Jermyn becoming so zoological, Sally began to sob softly). A sly, purring cat, keeping the mouse for ever under her velvet paw, caring nothing for its bodily and mental agonies. It was right to picture Nature as a woman, for there was nothing more relent- page 208 less. Cowards, all women; taking and taking and never paying…. But he'd had enough. Sally needn't imagine she was the only woman a man could love. There were as good fish in the sea….

“Oh, don't!” cried Sally.

Jermyn snatched hat and cloak and walked out, leaving her to them. This, he felt, wondering what was the matter with him that he could think of nothing that had not been said a million times, was the last straw. His brain seemed empty. He had had no words, no thoughts but the bald foolish words of a child. He felt like a child —lost and terrified, wanting to kneel like a little boy and say prayers at the lap of the woman whom he was now cursing in Major Henry's best Waterloo language.

A little of his ironic detachment returned later when he made on the margin of the article he was trying to write the sign which means on a whaler's chart: “Drawn irons. Lost whale.” Sally had made a fool of him. Never while he lived would she have the chance again. Here Jermyn upset the inkpot and went to bed.