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III

In Auckland Sophia was feeling the world very unkind, what with Uncle Peregrine selling the house over their heads, and mamma and Emily going to Canterbury. “Why can't I go too?” demanded Sophia, her tongue nearly hanging out at thought of all the rich station-holders.

Linda, said Caroline, had only sent for Emily, and since she knew very well that no young lady could travel alone, of course she must have expected her mother too. “I always think Providence must have sold the farm for us just when we needed the money,” said Caroline, pulling old gowns of purple satin and orange and plum-colour merinos and baréges out of trunks. Even poor dear John couldn't expect her to go to Sydney in crape, and if she did not get away soon Peregrine might look for repayment of her borrowings—which of course she would be glad to settle, only no one could do the impossible.

“Did Linda ask you, mamma?” said Maria, so ready with awkward questions.

“A mother don't wait for a daughter to ask her. She knows she is always welcome. I think you girls had better go and live with Major Henry,” said Caroline, feeling that he was too old to put up much of a fight.

“Oh, yes. And with Jermyn,” cried Sophia, peeping in the mirror. In a dim light her spots were hardly noticeable, and she would do her hair in the new way with rolls. It may be only because he thinks he is too old that he hasn't spoken, since he has married no one else, she thought, feeling how soon she could better that when living in the house.

But neither age nor anything else kept Jermyn from speaking when an agitated Major Henry put Caroline's proposal before him.

“If you take those two moulting guinea-hens I'll never enter the house again,” said Jermyn.

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“Damn it, boy, you don't suppose I want 'em,” protested the Major, dragging at his grey whiskers. “But I suppose the poor devils must live somewhere.”

Jermyn didn't see why they should. He went up to talk to a tremulous Sally, with cap sliding off her head and boxes half-packed for Wellington. “Sing to me, I am so tired,” said Sally. So Jermyn sang:

Will ye come to the Hielands, Leezie Lindesay,
My luve and my bonny dear to be?
Will ye kilt up your kirtle, Leezie Lindesay,
And awa' to the Hielands wi' me?

And having sung that, he said: “A wise callant, that, Sally, never talking of wedding-rings. Will ye awa' wi' me when Peregrine goes to Wellington? He'll have so much luggage he'll never miss you.”

“He would when he wanted it unpacked,” said Sally, but her voice shook. So many times in days gone by Jermyn had moved her heart with that old song. He rose and came to her.

“I mean it as I have always meant it, my dear. All our lives are being upset through no fault of our own, and yours is so lonely now. Your young ones will never return to the nest, Sally. Come with me to England … to Scotland. And you shall lie in the heather and play with the fairies, and I'll make books out of the running brooks … and you and I will be young again, and so very happy, I think.”

This Sally, who would never really be past the playtime she had never known, was tempted now as she had not been tempted before. Almost piteously she clutched at Eternity…. “We shall have all that, Jermyn.”

“You know I don't believe in Eternity.”

“I do, dear.”

“That don't make one.”

Didn't it? Could beliefs make anything sure? But life was such a meaningless muddle without them. She tried to smile.

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“My Eternity is so strong it will get you there in spite of yourself. And Mr Lovel really does seem to need me now.”

“Merely to promenade with. Let him take Sophia.”

Sally began to laugh, suddenly laid her still bright head upon his arm. “Please, please don't make it harder,” she begged. Virtuous promenade with Mr Lovel was surely the very hardest exercise ever required of a woman….

Of the hegira of Caroline and Emily to Sydney and then in another small steamer back to New Zealand's South Island Peregrine heard only that it had cost very much more than was expected, and would he please buy Sophia some wool for framing her texts.

There were also numberless sheets of thin paper for Sally, who would be so eager to hear of Tiffany and Darien. Caroline, who considered herself drama and so often turned out to be comedy, had not approved of Sydney. “No one seemed to realize who I was, and very few returned my bows. A vulgar place. But they have hansom cabs, which Auckland hasn't.”

Sally struggled on through Caroline's gaudy Italian handwriting, searching for news of Tiffy and Darien. “Even the ladies here talk of horses and race-meetings which I consider most ungenteel and said so. I bought at the Monster Clothing Hall a black lace mantle to go with my violet velvet, and Emily paid three-and-six for a pink scarf which was very extravagant. We travelled across the Plains by Cobb's Royal Mail Coach with six horses but it had no springs and made me feel so unwell that I almost fainted a dozen times and I must say the other passengers were quite disagreeable though I had to lean on them. The Plains are shocking empty. Emily saw in the distance what she thought were cattle but I consider to be lions since none but wild creatures who knew no better would live here, though Linda does and she and her children are very well behaved, I must say, and Andrew page 372 should be thankful I took such pains with her. We came to a big river….”

Caroline's description of the big river occupied two pages, describing her anguish when the horses got into a quicksand, and everyone was nearly tipped out on shinglespits and drowned in the swift streams, and had to avoid the ford because of great trees brought down by the last flood.

“Sodom and Golgotha for miles, and I fainted dead away as any lady would. But Emily cried all the time so we got through, though how we lived I really cannot say. So the coach left us at what they call an accommodation-house but I couldn't find any accommodation and a boy was sent on a horse to tell Andrew we had arrived. And thank goodness for that.

“Yet we were far from arriving since we had seven more miles to drive in a strange conveyance called a buggy and not intended for crinolines and Andrew so fat I didn't know him, and Linda fat too when we got there. I said at once: You must give up cream again, Linda, as an example to Emily though I haven't seen any rich station-holders yet. But we have only been here two days and I am still so sore I must conclude, and if it hadn't been for the devotion of a mother which can even endure my sufferings I would never have come….”

Not one word of Darien nor Tiffy. Sally began to cry softly, then discovered a sheet from Emily that promised better. Emily (a natural gusher) was full of rapturous italics. “The darling children. You'd never expect Linda's to be so handsome. Andrew so broad and jovial. Quite the vieux rose,” wrote Emily, feeling that French was always so telling. “Dear mamma almost lived on her drops, since her nerves gave out daily and her screams made us all shudder, though I held the vinaigrette to her nose the whole way over the big river which was very difficult to do. There was a vastly handsome gentleman in the coach, but he was so shy and didn't like to be looked at. Darien page 373 says she and Tiffany have taken all the beaux on the Plains, but they'll spare me one. She looks vastly healthy and so does Tiffy though there is nothing but tussock anywhere. Linda's house is quite a la morte though starting with four rooms but now many attachments and the nor'west wind blew some away. Darien says it blows the dogs off the chains and paint off drays, and may blow me into some station-owner's house. So I say, let the wind blow.”