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Promenade

V

V

Peregrine (whose eyes seemed to have grown closer together with seeing his sons trying to catch Gabriel) took Brian's death with few words, but he went straight to military headquarters and demanded Jerry's release. “My sons have done their share,” he said, hinting firmly at his own long services to the country, which were courteously acknowledged with the reservation that nothing could be done in a hurry.

This at least was true, since Cameron (heartily sick of what he called “merely a land-grabbing racket”) so confined his men to the beaches that the Maoris called him The Lame Sea-Gull and the Chronicle lightly referred to that king of France who led his army up the hill and led it down again. Paper quarrels between Cameron and Grey grew so dangerous that trembling clerks were forced to write requests that “this correspondence be couched in more becoming language.” Then Grey suddenly flung dilly-dallying to the winds, and went out and won a victory for himself with the colonial troops.

All that England had said against New Zealand was nothing to what it said at this. Already it had been flouted by the colonial Parliament's bill for a self-reliant policy, and now its army was ignored. So England formed regulations against the interference of colonial governors in future; but Grey had the country behind him now. Too many cooks in our kitchen and all spoiling the broth—we will get rid of the Imperials and do our own cooking, said gentlemen, buttoning up their coats and wondering where to begin.

England began, slowly and with great dignity with- page 379 drawing her regiments. Then wild squalls of fear blew up and down the country. “The unjustifiable risk,” cried the southern papers. “We are rushing headlong to ruin,” cried settlers, who had not rushed anywhere else for years. “‘Avoid the man who is hasty in his speech, for there is more hope for a fool than for him,’” declaimed Sir Winston at the Institute … which had lost half its interest since Sir Peregrine Lovel was no longer there to put them all to rights.

Down in the Parliament at Wellington Peregrine was making speeches, and Sally sat with Lucilla in the Ladies' Gallery to hear. As he had never been young (thought Sally) it seemed that he would never be old. Even this crushing blow of Brian's death had not broken or even bent him. With a little added portliness for dignity, assisted by his eyeglass, his white carnation, and his undoubted elegance, he made his points with the cold precision that Sally had always feared. Never yet have I really been able to feel that he is my husband. Oh, how can I be so wicked? What will become of me, thought Sally, looking so piteous and pretty under a little blue chip-hat that Lucilla put a hot arm round her.

“Don't be alarmed. He'll get through it all right,” said Lucilla, who would never forgive him for selling the house and letting mamma and the girls loose upon the world. Probably she'd have to take some of them presently, since her Mr Piper had a great respect for anyone connected with titles.

Peregrine had no doubt about getting through, although dimly conscious that being Sir Peregrine helped. He began at once about the necessity for New Zealand to fight its own battles.

“Gentlemen, as England has refused financial help in the future, we can no longer support twelve thousand of the Imperial Army at forty pounds per head per annum, in addition to all our own volunteers, militia, and constabulary. The country is millions of pounds in debt. page 380 Progress, enterprise of every kind is being not merely crippled but murdered. Under dual control we have for years been hampered by the fact that our colonial Parliament makes the laws and the Imperial Army is at liberty to ignore them.

“The English soldier,” went on Peregrine, who never forgot that he had been one himself, “is the finest in the world. But he also is hampered by the instructions of the English Parliament, while in methods, tradition, and physique he cannot possibly be so suitable as our young tough colonials for the very difficult guerilla warfare which seems unhappily to be our lot. This step, which must penalize our young men still further, has not been arrived at without grave consideration. But we who are responsible are assured that the time has come when New Zealand must stand upon her own feet….”

Even if I lose Jerry too there is no other way to save the country, thought Peregrine, sinking the father in the patriot for a whole hour yet, and was so exhausted at the end of it that he accepted Lucilla's kisses and congratulations with apathy. They'll never let Jerry go when this gets into the papers, he felt, driving home silently with Sally. To sow himself and his sons that others might reap … is this what it means to be a pioneer?

“I believe Parliament has the whole North behind it now,” said Jermyn, coming up to Peregrine's rented house in Wellington. “But these papers make me dubious about the South.”

The South, busy at lambing, shearing, rounding up its mobs of cattle in the ranges, was dubious about itself. It wanted neither conscription nor war-debts but was likely to get both.

“'Pon honour, y'know, it seems that New Zealand has cut her own throat,” said an English cadet, calling in at Durdans and finding it surprisingly full of Lovels. “Not exactly complimentary to the Imperials, neither. But let New Zealand cut her own throat if—”

page 381

Andrew (who had gone colonial with the best of them since he now had a share in Durdans) ceased playing with little Deborah to retort:

“Apparently it was that or letting the Maoris do it, sir.” These young scions of good English families apprenticing themselves on the stations in order to learn farming—what did they know about anything? Never would he have one on Durdans.

“Oh, la! What we have suffered from the Maoris,” cried Caroline, getting out a black-edged handkerchief and beginning to sob. “When I think of my poor dear Sir John—”

“There, there, mamma darling. He can't be killed again, though Sophy and Maria may be,” said Emily, running with the smelling-bottle, kneeling in a flutter of white frills by Caroline. “You see, sir, the Maoris killed dear papa,” she explained, looking up, since that was her most effective attitude, though one didn't often get the chance. Emily (to the dismay of her family) promised to be quite as voluptuous as Caroline, and had no more sense, thought Andrew, who was finding it rather difficult to be jovial just now.

“She don't remember him often, Mr Morley,” said Linda placidly. “Only when she finds a mourning handkerchief in her drawer. You'd better burn them all, Emily.”

Having beaten mamma in a couple of stand-up fights, easy-going Linda was beginning to take a high hand. It was so wonderful to discover that mamma was but human after all.

“'Pon honour … so sorry to have upset the lady,” apologized young Morley, riding on to Bendemeer, where the ladies were never upset. An awful-looking female, all gimp and bugles, and the other … making eyes … “Who the dickens are they?” he inquired, sitting down comfortably with Tiffany and Darien.

Tiffany, reading the Northern papers, left explanations page 382 to Darien, who suddenly remembered that she had vowed to marry Emily off, also that Tom Morley always repeated everything he was told.

“Lady Lovel is going back presently to her married daughter in Wellington,” she said, inventing as fast as she could. “I hope she'll leave Emily here, for the poor child can't call her soul her own. The finest of girls, and so damned unselfish she lets that ogre of a mother eat her up.”

“By Jove,” said young Morley, much impressed. Perhaps those dark eyes had been appealing for help. But he couldn't offer it. No cadet with his term to serve could. Darien followed up:

“We're giving the dear girl a dance soon. Twentyfifth. I never write letters, so you must tell all the men we know that we'll expect them, Tom.”

“Delighted. Honoured. By Jove, that is splendid of you. Except twice at the Christchurch race-time I haven't danced since I left Home. We'll all be here, you may be sure. I … I suppose you wouldn't give me the first dance, Lady Calthorpe?”

“You suppose quite right, my lad. Tell your boss I'm keeping it for him … or somebody else. Oh,” cried Darien, seized with another notion that might help Emily, “I hope old Lady Lovel won't die first. Such a weak heart she may go off pop any moment.”

“By Jove,” said Morley again, and Darien let that sink in. Young Tom had few ideas, but what were given him he held. “If you only did as much as I do we'd have Emily married in a month,” she told Tiffany when Morley was gone.

“Yes,” said Tiffany, her mind still with the northern papers in what seemed to be another country. Still the North agonized, she read, in the struggle that had killed Brian, that had taken Hew's right arm, that was taking so much else. Philosophy don't help much, thought Tif- page 383 fany, though thankful that General Chute, who had replaced Cameron, was proving how the Imperials, when led by determination, could go into the bush and do as much hard hitting as Von Tempsky. And there was so much help now from loyal Maoris, who were becoming majors and captains under the pakeha.

At any rate Sally wrote hopefully to Roddy that Jerry might be home soon now, and she was growing used to Wellington with its houses all hung like wasp-nests on its steep hills, but everyone was very sorry that Sir George Grey had been recalled by England…. “And I am sending you two more vests of red flannel, my darling, which I hope will reach you some day. You seem so very far away,” wrote Sally, feeling how everybody was far away, except Mr Lovel, who was always so very near.

Matters, felt Peregrine, would be much complicated by the departure of Grey who, whatever his faults, had now become an institution and, having proved himself soldier as well as ruler, was deserving of all respect. England would never forgive his behaviour to the Imperials, and she had treated him badly, cried the papers now, combining to send him off in a blaze of glory, forgetting for the moment how they had formerly hated him.

There was, it seemed, so much that it would be well to forget everywhere. Jermyn, coming down from Auckland, told of such poverty there that hard-pressed fathers of families were burning their houses to get the insurance-money, and immigrants, still hopefully arriving, went North to hard labour on the kauri gum-fields—since America was demanding gum for something or other—or so crowded the boats going round to Westland and down to Thames that there was really not standing room.

“Have to make a living somehow, poor devils; but we English are so improvident,” said Jermyn, telling how Chinese were scavenging on the worked-over Dunedin gold-fields, making good livings where the white man had starved. “Westland seems the only place now, though page 384 I shan't go there. I shall write another book, since my last had some success,” he said.

Jermyn had lost his hungry look now, thought Sally rather wistfully. Always compensations for men and so few for women. Even Mr Lovel (it was very difficult to call him Sir Peregrine) had found so many that she couldn't keep track of them: Parliament, the Wellington Harbour Board, the importing of quantities of English birds—sparrows, larks, thrushes, what not—to replace the clear native songsters.

Jermyn laid his hand over Sally's lying quiet in her lap.

“Still adamant, my Sally? There is yet time for Scotland and the heather.”

“Oh, Jermyn!” The flood-gates suddenly burst in Sally. “I wish I could. Oh, how I wish I could. I am so lonely….”

Jermyn put his arms round her. Passion, he felt, had left him. That mad sweet riot of the senses had passed to a younger generation now, and heaven send they made better use of it. “At lease we could grow old together,” he said.

But Sally couldn't even do that, so unaccountable are women. So he dried her eyes for her, telling her how Sophia darned Major Henry's socks with variegated wools and how Maria fed him on mush until he came to Jermyn pleading for a night on the tiles again. “If I don't get blind drunk I shall be rude to those women, poor devils,” said the Major.

So he and the Major had had a glorious time, though the girls kept the Major in bed for two days after, and Auckland wasn't what it was; with everyone still mad on the desire for separation, and the papers so scurrilous about Wellington and Parliament that the Maoris (having long since replaced the missionary Bible with newspapers) respected nobody, not even themselves, and got page 385 drunker even than the pakeha—which was very unpleasant and quite dangerous.

“I don't feel we have governed this country at all well,” complained Jermyn to Peregrine coming in.

But Peregrine, who had the undying quality of absolute belief in himself, wouldn't agree. Grey, he said, standing in his old stiff attitude before the fireplace, was the last of the really executive governors. Bowen would be little more than a pleasant figurehead, and with all power passing into the hands of the Parliament matters would soon be put straight now. “It was merely a free hand that we needed,” said Peregrine, looking like a premier already, with statues and busts preparing for him everywhere and never any for Sally.