V

Dick Sackville was no letter-writer, and the short bald scraps that came to Tiffany hurt her a little, though she treasured them close in a chamois-skin bag sewn to the inside of her stays. Her letters he read huddled in his great coat over some camp-fire and burned directly after. Tiffany, poor love, was so recklessly unwise. No letters, these, to be found on a dead man.

“We have known the real magic never to lose it again,” she wrote. “Now we know miracles and sit among the gods, you and I.” How she went up in the clouds, the fearless thing, making a glorious sacrament of what some day she might give her eyes to forget … most probably would, since it was still two years before she could marry without her father's consent, and Dick Sackville and his regiment would surely be far away by then.

To-night's letter he read more than once; smoked several pipes over it, refusing sharply to join the singsong round the fires. Tiffany was coming down into the Waikato to marry him, and he must at once let her know on what date he could be at Rotorua after September 21. “It is all arranged, and my joy is doubled by knowing that you will share it,” she wrote. “I fear you may have trouble in keeping your wife in order, sir. But have patience, always remembering that the soul would have no rainbows had the eyes no tears….” Then at the end: “I love you. I lie awake in the nights, and a thousand times I tell all the gods that be how I love you, and surely one will cease his carousing in Olympus and turn the bullet that would enter my heart too….”

Sackville could see her writing in that attic; with the candle in its flat china stick on the dressing-table between a little heap of her hair-ribbons and the plain wooden page 302 brush. The unwieldy cage of her crinoline would be hung over a chair, and Tiffany curled on the knobby counterpane in her petticoats; the long waves of her bright hair tumbling over her neck, her rounded arms…. In that radiant vision love inflamed him again. He wanted her. Of course he wanted her even to the extent of sacrificing his career—which was what it would mean if the story got out. Peregrine Lovel and his own colonel would see to that. Abduction of a minor, he thought, grimly. And who she had found to help her to such a fantastic affair he did not know. Suddenly he began to laugh. By Jove, I'd back Tiffy to climb Jacob's Ladder, he thought; thrust the letter into the fire with his heel, and went to join his mates as the last black scrap of it crisped away.

Camp-fire talk was liable to be fretful in these days, and men looking to Dick Sackville for cheer did not get it to-night. Unshaven dirty gentlemen who were wont to be so monstrous fastidious grumbled for ever about the Maori, whose methods were obscenely exasperating to soldiers trained in the respectable elements of war. So few of the fools wanted to clean up or be cleaned.

The Maoris made a jest of the sacred solemnity of fighting for one's life. “Lie down, we are going to shoot,” shouted brown muscular young bucks, dodging naked behind tree-boles. And when patrols got lost (as they so often did in this dark ancientry of forest) there was always some grinning nigger to guide them back to camp for the reward of the coveted black tobacco. English officers round the fires could hardly express their rage at these blithe enemies.

“Insultin' brutes,” complained a captain, whose elegant dundrearies were more than a little ragged. “Did you hear what they did when Corby's company ran out of powder yesterday? Some blasted chief sent to offer him half theirs. ‘Don't stop—it's such fun,’ the chief said. Fun! My Lord! Do they think we're here just to provide amusement for bloody niggers?”

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There was equal puzzlement among the Maoris, among chiefs who knew their Begats back to the race of giants which once had peopled the world. These pakeha did not play the game like gentlemen. Indeed, they seemed not to understand that war is principally a game of skill, and they showed so little skill that one had to pity them. Tramping in heavy boots that could be heard by Maori ears a mile off, crashing like bullocks through the scrub, blunting the honourable weapons of war by cutting paths with them, destroying their shoulder-muscles by marching with forty-pound packs—how take so stupid a people seriously, said Maoris, clad merely in tattoo, paint, and bandoliers, and as noiseless as the little wrens. Yet the pakeha were brave, though discourteous, never either taking or offering ammunition when one side ran out of it.

We will kill more when they have learned how to fight, said the chiefs.

Tiffany and Darien, riding with Nick Flower into the Waikato through the bright September weather, saw few enough of the carts with their blue-blanketed sufferers just come off the river steamers; yet it was wise to keep hands hid within the great belted coats above the breeches and short leggings, to keep fair faces shadowed by the slouching drovers' hats. The Maoris brought by Flower to tend the pack-horses had no English, but Tiffy wouldn't have cared if they had, thought Darien, marveling. To a lady whose own self has always been of the supremest importance Tiffany's total absorption in someone else was so unnatural as to be quite unsettling. That Dick Sackville should be the someone was truly comic and just showed what that indefinable thing called charm could do.

Darien, so conscious of her own charm, felt her superiority in every way to Sackville, and listened pleasantly to Nick Flower's talk when, after long days of riding and cold nights in friendly Maori whares, they came at last into Rotorua. Since Rotorua with its hot mud, steaming page 304 geysers and sulphur stinks was now on the map Flower hoped that somewhere Dante was writing another “Inferno” about it.

Tiffany saw no infernos, being in paradise, where Dick would presently join her; and when Nick Flower was gone after the necessary priest she stood with Darien at the foot of the White Terrace out by Lake Tarawera and was impelled to climb those dazzling marble steps with their blue water for ever flowing to wash away the sins of all the world. “There is no one to see,” she said, flinging off her garments and beginning to climb, while Darien dabbled her feet in the warm pools at the bottom and wondered how she would ever get the Lincolns home.

Nick Flower would have to manage that, for she had done her share in managing lately. Exchanging Tiffany for Lucilla at the farm, bluffing John into the belief that they were going back to town and so leaving him anchored fast with all the animals and inefficient Maori help, bluffing Tiffy into the belief that everything would be all right, though feeling it very unlikely that Dick Sackville would turn up….

Darien rolled on her stomach, and watched Tiffany standing like one of those white statues they put in museums far up on the shining terrace and wished that all the men in the world could see how beautiful she was. But that wouldn't be proper unless she turned into silica like the terrace. I wonder how long it would take if she keeps on doing that, thought Darien, as Tiffany lay down again in one of the little lakes worn by unguessed centuries of blue water on every shelf.

This shelf was hotter than the last, thought Tiffany, watching the silky water flow over her. Each would grow hotter in its long-smoothed marble basin until the last one gushed boiling from those deep-down mighty fires that fed it for ever, as the fires of love feed human hearts. I clothe you with my love, Hemi had told her once in the page 305 lovely Maori imagery. It would take more than love to clothe me now, she thought, shamed yet exultant.

I have no fears, she thought. Always she had wanted giants to fight, even with her baby fists. Always her mind had been abandoned enough to welcome new ideas … even to light a candle to show them the way. Now the candle was lit to guide herself and Dick on their path for ever, thought Tiffany, her sense of proportion gone so far astray that the very atmosphere had a clarity, a sound of triumph, a poignant colour prepared for her alone. “Our love began when the world did. It will last until the end of heaven,” she said, never being one to do things by halves. And indeed this live water flowing over her was the inward ceaseless current of life itself, coming from, running into eternity. Little shapeless songs came bubbling through her heart. Thoughts, words so delicate they would not form a rhyme.

Bind the lilies, snowy lilies on the portals of my door
To tell to all the world that he is coming….

Ah, but the world must not know yet, and the only lilies she had were her own fair arms. She rose to her knees, raising her arms in the translucent air.

“Dick! Dick! Love conquers all things,” she cried. How all dead lovers must be envying her now.

Riding back to Rotorua, which was no more than a few collections of Maori whares, she was still in the dream. Darien was somewhat uneasy. Tiffy always ran a thing to death. But it was over the sooner, and the sooner Tiffy got over Dick Sackville the better—especially since he mightn't come. Perhaps she'll be an R.C. next time and go into a nunnery, thought Darien hopefully, having no patience with the spiritual strivings which so uncom-fortably attacked Sally and Tiffany and Roddy.

Nick Flower arrived with a scared little priest, who must be Dutch or something, since his English was very poor. “Can he do it?” asked Darien, a little anxious, for page 306 men so often made a mess of things, though unfortunately one had to depend on them. But Flower pooh-poohed Darien's doubts, and Tiffy was already out in the moon-light waiting for Sackville and probably marshalling all her religions back to Osiris to support her. So Darien got into an old green gown—shockingly crumpled, as Nick Flower's eyes told her instantly. But it did become her, making her feel so frivolous that presently she and Nick forgot the little priest sitting dumb in a corner and Tiffy in her white gown out under the stars. If Sackville don't come she will throw herself into a geyser. We really should have chosen a dryer place, thought Darien, remembering Tiffany for a moment.

For Tiffany, the thumping of her heart almost drowned the constant thumping of the geysers. Those past triumphant hours held deeper meaning now that all the gods were prepared to bless and crown them, though she would have liked a Mohammedan service too. Papa's Our Father was the sternest of them all, thought Tiffany, feeling rather a frightened little girl again, wishing that Roddy were here with her in this great lonely night.

Here came Captain Richard Sackville, footing it down the slope like a conqueror, his dark military cloak spread behind him like wings, the moonlight a benediction on his head.

Sudden terror of Captain Sackville obliterated her beloved “Dick.” Tiffany tried to run from him. But her feet wouldn't help. She stood tremblnig, her head turned away. Afterwards he thought how she couldn't have done anything more clever, for he had not come in the spirit of a bridegroom. In fact, he felt resentlfully, he would not be here at all but for the fear that these importunate lunatics would pursue him into camp. Far better have left it … life so uncertain … no knowing what trouble this might land them in, he had meant to say, being rather superior and offhand, since Tiffany, having so little consideration for herself, couldn't expect him to have much page 307 for her. If girls will be light-minded such things are bound to happen, and why should I have to pay for it, he had thought, his anger mounting with the unreason of the volatile man not wishing to be restricted in his pleasuring.

Then that slight white girl with the faint glory in her hair had turned to fly from him, and the natural hunter that is in every man roused again. Hurrying down the slope he remembered her proud, shy, and utterly desirable, holding him off though love was shining from her face.

So there was old Dame Nature at it again, hearing the same vows and protestations she had heard a million million times, watching the same old technique of kisses which foolish glowing Tiffany believed were fresh-minted for her alone.

“One to my three or four. That's not the game, my Queen of Hearts. After I have come so far too.”

Along half a dozen roads she had come infinitely farther, but neither thought of that. Her upturned face was so tender in its penitence.

“I never thought of counting…. Indeed, indeed, I will try to be all that you would have me,” she whispered. So he'd go through with it, for what living man could resist her, thought Dick Sackville who had never been a man of much resistance.

Flower saw that the moment they came in. Good Lord, all this burgeoning and blooming for such a paper fellow! He greeted Sackville indifferently. These two were only pawns to Flower whose real business was with Darien. To woman, it seems, her power is mystery, her weapon is concealment; and then some chance hand lifts the veils and the divinity so worshipped, so longed for, shudders down into the same weak flesh a man despises in himself. Something like that Flower had felt when Peregrine Lovel brought the story of his wife. The same sweet mystery, the valiance rose round Tiffany … but the veil would page 308 drop for her also, and no woman was worth a man's pity. Not even Darien….

To that bleak certainty Flower had reached when compacting with Darien in the little Auckland tavern. For the rest, chance must be the arbiter, and if the dice were thrown against the women who's to blame? Not Flower but the great laws of good and evil that make such jest of us all.

He, leaning against the rough wall, watching the women prepare the altar, hearing Sackville's ready laugh, wondered if the little parson, so greedy for dollars, were actually a parson after all. He had not pressed the point, did not mean to press it even if he could have understood the fellow's gibberish. This time, if chance so had it, he might strike Mrs Lovel and Peregrine both, and some deep atavistic current running through him made him glad. As for Darien, he'd settle with her later if only he could get her now.

I leave it to chance, thought Flower, placating with Maori superstition any gods that might be. The scene is all set now anyway.

Two candles on a board covered with a white silken shawl, a dark eager ring of Maori faces in the door, the distant thump of the geysers, Nick Flower and Darien like ghosts among the shadows … this was the pomp and panoply for Tiffany's wedding, with strange acrid incense from the sulphur-pools.

Darien clapped her hands when Tiffany's ring went on. Again she had done the impossible, as she so often had. Luck is always with me, she thought. Tiffany stood quiet and shining like a lamp. The little parson chattered in English and an unknown tongue. Sackville made glib responses, nudged Tiffany to hers. Flower drew a long breath when all was done. So far so good, though Sackville's amused eyes kept asking: What is your reason for all this? Then Darien, glowing almost as vividly as her hair, was kissing Tiffany, kissing Sackville, ksising the page 309 parson, not kissing Flower. But she looked at him over a glass of the best champagne Flower could buy in Auckland.

“I vow I never did see anything so romantic before. I'll be married next time in a Maori whare at midnight myself,” she cried.

“Did you mean that about your marriage?” asked Flower when, after much laughter (even Tiffany was laughing now) the bridal pair were left in a whare prepared for them and these two stood out under the stars.

“I never mean anything much,” said Darien, yawning with the champagne.

“Why do you think I put myself to all this trouble?”

“Lord, how do I know? I never wonder why men do things.”

“Then please wonder now,” he said, roughly, standing before her in the door. “Darien, will you marry me tonight? It seems a pity to waste that priest.”

“Let me sit down and get my breath,” said Darien, pushing past him. I knew he couldn't resist me much longer, she thought, preparing to plague him.

“Shouldn't there be some love in it, Mr Flower? Tiffy seems to think so.”

“I didn't know that would interest you.” Determination, his whole reckless self, seemed to be deserting him. Desire was making him afraid. “I would never tie myself to any woman unless—unless she meant what you do to me.”

To have made Nick Flower nervous was the biggest thing yet. Darien looked round. The candles, though guttering, still burned. There was still an unopened bottle of champagne. The priest's boots showed in a corner and apparently he was in them. As Flower said, it seemed a pity to waste him.

“I suppose you want me to help you rule New Zealand,” she said, pinching her lip, looking down.

“No.” He laughed shakily. “She has too many rulers page 310 already, poor divine little country. I—I want you because I love you, Darien.”

“Oh!” She was disappointed. Any man could (and did) want that. She thought quickly. Money was his, honour might be. But he'd keep them, and she wanted such things for herself…. He said with defiant diffidence:

“You're thinking what you'd get out of it. I have money—”

“You mean you'd buy me?”

“Is there any other way to get you?”

Darien considered. “We're both too strong. We'd be cat and dog for ever.”

“I'll chance that.”

“Well, I think I won't. I'd be second fiddle all the time with you, and I'd hate it…. Here … don't do that….”

But she was helpless against the broken hope and fury in him; struggling in his arms, scratching her face against the roughness of his coat.

“You have no heart,” he said, breathing hard with trying to hold her. “My God, you have no heart…. Take, take, and never a bone to throw at a dog. I'm going to take now….”

“Keep off!” screamed Darien, raging under his kisses.

They had forgot the little priest, now stumbling forward with a white face.

“Canaille! Leave be la belle madame. I kill. I call on your God….”

He endeavoured to do both. Flower knocked him over with the back of his hand; then, suddenly trampling across him, rushed out of the place. The priest, seeing his face, knew that Flower had not dared to stay.

“Now you've made a nice mess of it,” said Darien, sitting down with a short laugh. “How am I ever going to get those Lincolns now?”

The little man picked himself up.

“C'est un triomphe,” he said, returning to his corner with a proud step.