Abrupt occurrences go along with pioneering, and visions long mellowed by gestation have a habit of finally confronting their parents with horrid fact. Facts in Auckland, where Lovels and other refugees spent many months dividing and reuniting like protoplasm in the small houses of harried ladies short of everything but kindness, became actually coarse, presenting less privacy and considerably more complications than the Beach.

Caroline was the first to achieve a house of her own, since the whole community lent a hand there, and (although it could never be described to ladies in England) it possessed the supreme merit of raising its four rooms and gabled attic in Official Bay, exclusive home of the gentry.

“Of course everyone will call on Lady Lovel and I always think it so right to be prepared,” said Caroline, putting on her best lemon kid gloves and sitting in state for callers as soon as she had a chair to sit on. Sally and her family floated longer, to be compensated by a fine new house which Peregrine imported from Sydney in sections and thus turned Caroline purple with envious anger. He filled all its ample spaces with Brussels carpets, long mirrors and tall carved chairs that (having been for so long interred in packing-cases) looked at each other with an air of never having met before.

“It was kind of John to let Peregrine have some of our family portraits, Sally,” said Caroline, inspecting gold-framed ancestors on pale blue garlanded wall-paper. “I always think he is too kind. Such a pity your walls are not in the fashionable red flock. All my principal rooms page 77 are papered in flock.” Indeed, Caroline was finding it very hard to be civil to Sally; and when Peregrine called his house Lovel Hall, for a whole month she did not try to be.

Sally had other troubles besides Caroline. There were the children always being Maoris in kitchen mats out in the back yard and trying to tattoo each other with oyster-shells, until Peregrine discovered that Kororareka had not been burned down a moment too soon and brought governess ladies to supervise the making of pothooks and hangers with sharp sticks in boxes of damp sand—paper being far too valuable for children.

But these ladies came and went in an agitated cloud since the boys, they said delicately, were too experimental. Yet sticking pins in ladies' legs and putting dead mice in their chairs was not experiment. The boys knew what would happen. And it always did, even to the thrashings which Mr Lovel (who prided himself on his justice) daily administered to all his offspring. For if you cannot whip children into the right path how in the world can you expect them to get there?

Then there was Darien. Since Auckland, being entirely military and respectable, did not suffer young ladies to walk abroad unattended Darien at once put on her new green bonnet (with a little white tulle frill inside) and set out to teach Auckland the worth of that convention.

“Am I a stalking pestilence?” she demanded, looking so delightful with her masses of auburn ringlets and the delicious pinks-and-whites of her provocative charming face with its firm little chin that Sally almost went on her knees with pleadings.

“Indeed, darling, you are too handsome … and it is not proper. With a gentleman….”

“Where am I to get the gentleman if I don't go look for him, you owl?” demanded Darien, feeling that Sally was not all a sister might expect. With no Graham boys, and with Jermyn and all the other handsome young bucks page 78 gone to Heke's war or to Wellington, where other Maoris were becoming very lively, Auckland, like Sally, was not at all what one might expect either. Darien felt herself wasted; and, since Major Henry had now told her all about Lady Hamilton, where was the use of being like her if Darien couldn't find a Nelson? And Auckland was a horrid nasty little town, no better than a puling infant for all its airs.

Desirable as the dawn and stepping like Atalanta in pantalettes, Darien went through the muddle of manuka, flax-bushes, tree-ferns, and tall trees careering over hills and up and down gullies where small houses sat on their haunches here and there like lost dogs. Britomart Hill had the barracks … and also a high wall which not even an active girl could climb. But there was still Commercial Bay, sacred to the gentlemen and business.

All kinds of flotsam in these steep little narrow streets where nobody appeared to know that all the Lovel connection was Quality and to be respected as such. Draggled women snatched away Darien's shawl, tucking it under their rags. Drunken sailors tried to snatch a kiss. Bullockdrays bumping over rocks and stones had drivers who said things that surprised even her. In Shortland Street with its rickety little shops shawled ladies on the arms of top-hatted gentlemen glanced at her and looked away. Gentlemen looked too long. She felt uneasily conscious that she might be a pestilence after all.

Indeed, New Zealand's capital was stiff with military etiquette; well-schooled ladies rarely emitted a squeak when being helped across puddles and tussocks or even when negotiating the highly alarming foot-bridges spanning the Rivulet galloping down steep Queen Street to the muddy foreshore. Dangers, pigs, dogs, goats, smells, sweating men wheeling unsavoury barrows, all were superbly ignored … but never so completely as a girl walking alone … the brazen huzzy!

Peregrine, coming off the little wharf where Corny, page 79 Flower, and other enterprising traders had walked their little offices out on stilts to invite deliberating ships, saw a young girl in a green bonnet outside the Queen's Head tavern with a crowd of Maori lumpers and grinning sailors in flat glazed hats about her. For a minute he couldn't believe his eyes, and when he did he couldn't trust his tongue. Silently he tucked Darien's arm under his and took her home, guarding his breath till the door was shut.

Darien (who, for the first time in her life had suspected herself frightened) knew it now. One don't mind being called indecent. Peregrine would have called Lady Hamilton that. But one does mind being told that one will be cut by the whole town … especially with a weeping Sally to corroborate it. Never to be asked to routs or balls or kettledrums. Never a chance to catch a beautiful young buck…. “Oh, what a horrid wicked town,” cried Darien. “I know it will make me wicked too.”

Peregrine intimated that she was that already and went off in a stew to consult Major Henry. The Major guffawed. “The damned spirited little baggage! Do the right thing by her, boy, and in a few years she'll be the talk of the town.”

“She is that now,” said Peregrine, very icy.

“Not she! No one knows her … a chit in half-mast frocks and pantalettes. Seclude her. Seclude her until she gets sense and I'll wager she does us all credit.”

Peregrine remarked that one might as easily seclude a hurricane. He was really upset and his hair looked as though Darien had grabbed it. The Major considered. “She must be schooled. There's a Mrs Williams … Symposium for Young Ladies … just opened up Karangahape Road. Strict as the doose, I fancy, but with all the elegancies. Send her there.”

“I—ah—she might refuse to go.”

The Major nearly whistled. By the Lord Harry, the young miss had got even the great Peregrine shaky. page 80 “Let me talk to her,” he said, scenting a pleasurable interview.

Darien, her nose swollen with furious weeping, received her first balm when the Major winked at her over his high gill-collar.

“Well, young lady, you've scandalized us all and if I were a bit younger, damn it, I'd marry you myself.”

“You can,” said Darien eagerly. Hadn't some stuffy Sir William been the way to Lord Nelson?

“Er …” The Major sat down with a moment's pity for Mrs Williams. “No, no, my dear; you have better than that ahead if you'll only listen to me.”

It was a terrible listening and she cried until one could have wrung out both her handkerchief and the Major's. But thank the Lord for her sense of drama, her motherwit. Seclusion for a year or so; absorbing all the graces, the subtleties of a young lady—and then to burst on the town, bring it to her feet…. “By the Lord Harry, my dear, you can do it if ever a girl could. But you must sharpen your weapons. Sharpen your weapons.”

“The horrid place will be bigger then? More military?”

“Lord, yes. It will be….” To get Darien into her nunnery was there anything he wouldn't promise? Swarms of pomatumed young bucks breathing adoration, breathing slaughter against their kind … you couldn't lay the butter on too thick for such an infernal young egotist as Darien….“And for heaven's sake learn how to use your hands. A fan would be no better than a warming-pan to you now. Egad, I've seen ladies….”

The Major enlarged, went away inflating his chest. Gad, who said he had forgotten how to handle the Sex? Good wine must be matured, and there was good red wine here. The girl would go to her penance like a young knight into battle. “I fancy,” murmured the Major, “that I had better see Mrs Williams myself.” Women, even the best of 'em, were only good when they had no page 81 chance to be otherwise … and who could blame the dear creatures since they had so few chances?

II

Where Peregrine did not find chances he made them, thought Jermyn, witnessing on one of his flying visits from Wellington and Sydney Peregrine's conquest or little blue Mechanic's Bay, already so full of shipbuilders that it couldn't abide another. But Peregrine bought out one builder, ruined a second, went partners with a third (hadn't Jermyn told the Major that our Peregrine had a Quality?) and settled down to brisk and elegant competition with Niccol, Graham, and other established kings of the sea. Soon there was a lovely clipper on his stocks, and rafts of brown kauri-logs lying offshore, while many of the thirty-foot, sharp-pointed whaling-boats, painted the same pale blue as the sea, came from the yard of Lovel & Brackley.

Auckland was far too full of laws, taxes, and Little Committees, declared Peregrine, getting on most of the committees at once to keep them in order. Now he was on the Harbour Board too, said Major Henry, marvelling; but Jermyn (who looked so much older and handsomer, with those little side-whiskers a darker golden-brown than his hair) shrugged, remarking that it was Peregrine's Jovian certainty that did it. “He could always bamboozle folk. And he is such a perfect gentleman,” said Jermyn.

Major Henry (who bragged about Peregrine now that he was providing such good pickings for all) did not care for Jermyn's tone and said so. But Jermyn laughed, going up the hill to call on Sally, whom he hadn't seen for a month of Sundays. Yet, curiously, she had hovered in his mind like an elusive fragrance ever since he had last seen her.

For all his light handling of life the unease of a rest- page 82 less boy had only developed the greater unease of the matured man in Jermyn. Sydney with its charming young ladies and its friendly newspaper offices was not enough for him. Nor was the bush enough, so lovely and so darkly terrible with its ancientry of vast trees making wizard patterns of the stars, its subtle scents and shadows turning to poetry in a man's soul. Nor camp-fire talk and ribaldry, nor the joy that comes of good stuff written under stress and sweat and acclaimed by one's fellow-men. All Dead Sea apples, thought Jermyn, luxuriating in a young man's disillusions.

Supremely self-centred as Darien, whose incarceration he had heard of with shouts of laughter, Jermyn opened Mr Peregrine Lovel's handsome gate and went up between sweetpeas and roses (the witching ladies) to sit with Sally in a dim-lit room. Witchery here too in the delicate dimness; a remoteness about Sally with her bent brown head by the candle, her pale hands busy in some dark work, the vague flower-like spread of her lavender gown. Sally might any moment rise like a spirit and float away, he felt, trying to nail her to earth with talk of things … any things. Even as a weary work-hunted little grub up at Kororareka there had been a queer stability in Sally, and now he wanted stability more than anything else. And what were women for if not to give to men what they desired?

Sally wouldn't know the Beach now, he told her. Since men had reconstructed it and called it Russell it would never be a randy girl again. And Heke, a royal rebel still, sat defeated in his pa.

“No more hakas in the north now, Sally. The English have spoiled all those wild war-dances there. You remember the hakas on the hills?” In silence she remembered that strange night of shadowy faces, riding knights, and the inchoate gods behind them all: gods who came again and again to trouble her waking dreams…. But Jermyn must tell her of himself; of his successes, and page 83 presently he was talking with a colour and flow of words so different from Mr Lovel's precise sentences that she could have laughed for joy. Yet one must not laugh at this dear eager Jermyn with the tawny reflections from his coat bringing such lights into the brown eyes, with his masculine ways (so different from Mr Lovel's) making her feel so different too.

“You've made me feel so young. Isn't it funny?” she cried, dimpling. And then, with the Major's old-fashioned gallantry, he stooped and kissed her hand. A strange troubling charm in this artless Sally, he thought, going up to the barracks, where young officers made him very welcome and told him all the scandal of the town.

Jermyn could talk scandal too, since it was la mode. They drank milk-punch by the gallon until dawn, when those who were able put those who were not under the pump. Jermyn, having been under the pump, was cursed by Major Henry when he got home. “Good God, boy! You're a Lovel and can't hold your liquor,” cried the Major, wishing he'd been there to show them.

Jermyn had news. The barracks said gun-running was rife in the midlands. So Peregrine hadn't scotched it. Yet the little wars were valuable deterrents to an England clamouring to send convicts, although one allowed that the wars were a shocking nuisance to those who wanted to get on with developing the country….

To Nick Flower it was all grist to his mill of grinding down gentlemen who wouldn't recognize him as one, so that he never forgot his bar sinster nor the heirloom ring on Peregrine Lovel's finger. Grimly he was working for money (since money buys everything); smuggling guns from as far off as New York, taking up the I.O.U.'s of gay young rips until Auckland would have been enchanted by a peep into the locked safe in his office. Money had bought him into gentlemen's clubs, though not into their houses. But that would come, he thought, passing Mrs Williams' young Amazons on the hills with their riding- page 84 master, collecting whole bouquets of soft glances from innocent misses fluttered by so large and personable a man.

“Like a Viking. Who can he be?” sighed Emma Stokes afterward, turning her eyes romantically to the ceiling. Darien sat on a bed, contemplating her feet. It was not for these fools to know that Nick Flower had shod them thrice. She was the Symposium's model young lady now, and making as good capital out of that as she had out of the Beach. Now she rose silently, and began practising her curtsy, so innocently unconscious of the bright chattering parterre of maidens that she tricked them all. Indeed, if it hadn't been for this constant game of trickery she would have kicked the dust of the damned place from her shoes in a week.

But I am making myself flawless for Jermyn, thought Darien, who was not her father's daughter for nothing and had to have a motive to live up to. So she rose and sank like a buoyant wave; stood flushed and sweet as a daisy before the battery of admiring eyes.

“Oh, my loveliest, what would I give to curtsy like you,” gushed Sarah Wells, all emotion. “I vow the Queen isn't so graceful.”

“It's only her long legs,” said Elvira Carson, being short and fat. Darien blushed modestly at the mention of legs, and began doing such things with a fan (though only the mirror at Lovel Hall knew what she could do when no one was about) that the young ladies sighed enviously and went to practising themselves, quite unknowing that in the matrimonial race so soon to begin they would all be her enemies.

Darien knew. She would have Jermyn, and she would have all the others whom Major Henry had promised … and deserved them too after all those loathsome hours of elegant conversation, of curtsying until her legs ached, lying strapped on backboards, managing her skirts (foul work now that five petticoats were de rigueur and page 85 the flannel and the quilted satin ones so heavy), learning how to faint like a lady….

“All females faint,” said high-nosed Mrs Williams (who knew her world), intimating further that in order to touch eligible and experienced male hearts it was quite necessary not to do it like a charwoman. In spite of daily tightening of staylaces Darien found fainting difficult and quite revolting … since how could you know what gentlemen were feeling if you had to keep your eyes shut?

“I do my best,” she told Sally, coming meekly home for week-ends. “But there is a vast deal to learn and mathematics make me feel so humble.”

To Sally a humble Darien constantly vanishing from visitors was so unnatural that she fell on tears and proclaimed the matter tragic. “With all your high spirits and gaiety, to lose them so! My poor, poor darling….”

But Sally was far too simple to be trusted. It was better to say gently that she supposed she was growing wiser, and slip away like gleaming water to become wiser yet by a little quiet practice on Roddy and Brian, who fought each other daily for her smiles and received more whippings than ever.

The two boys rode over the hill to school now, which at least had the virtue of shortening morning prayers; but Tiffany still endured life in an anguish of starched sun-bonnets, lessons, and rules for every hour of the day. Daughters, although negligible in a man's scheme of values, did exist and therefore must be disciplined as much as wives, thought Peregrine, trying to do his best by them all, even though he was so occupied with a troubled world where governors never knew what would happen next and the Colonial Office was trying to make it happen all the time.

III

Governor Grey (governors fell like leaves in the early page 86 days of the colony and New Zealand had disposed of three in a short eight years) was, as everyone agreed, a stiff stick and icily indifferent to blandishments. Auckland had still too many taxes, too many women, and certainly too much Governor Grey, who thought himself the whole British Constitution and was much ridiculed by Jermyn in the thin little Chronicle, which now appeared twice weekly. Jermyn (who had come back to stay until he tired of it and found telling his ambitions to Sally continually more enjoyable) asserted that Grey, very tightly buttoned into black frock coat and very loosely slid into large trousers of a pale check, was intended by Providence to be ridiculed.

“I shall call this the Petticoat Government,” said Jermyn. And did, although Peregrine's Jovian calm broke for once, and he swore quite lustily at Jermyn for embroiling him with the Governor just as England discovered that the Waitangi Treaty was very far from being what it ought and began hastily dividing the country into New Ulster and New Munster (which didn't suggest peace), and dowering it with provincial assemblies, legislative councils and what not, all tangled in a vague host of strings for a proper man to pull to his advantage.

For a bet Jermyn lampooned Grey as a monthly nurse feeding a rebellious New Zealand out of a rum-bottle and stuck it up on the prison door in Victoria Street just above the stocks. And then, leaving Peregrine quite speechless, he settled his tall hat at a jaunty cock and went over to Official Bay to tell Sally about it.

Caroline (Nature's spoil-sport) was there, looking as though she had been dragged backward through a briar-patch. A shockingly demoralized Lady Lovel since John had taken himself, his Herefords, and his family off into the bush twelve miles away. Nemesis herself might have pitied Caroline (who had come in by bullock-dray to have a tooth out), sitting in rumpled crimson skirts and page 87 a draggled bonnet, complaining: “Sir John is quite impossible. He never thinks of me.”

Difficult to help it when there's so much of her, thought Jermyn. (Gad, how delicious Sally looked with that white soft fichu and that delicate bloom in her cheeks.) But he was sorry for Caroline's girls. Four … or was it six of 'em, whom, it appeared, she was developing so uprightly that there was danger of their falling backward.

“I give them daily tuition and two Collects on Sundays. With no help but a vulgar immigrant woman I can do no more,” declared Caroline, pulling on tight gloves of purple kid with a vast sigh. “I always say Peregrine must have been born with a silver tablespoon in his mouth while Sir John got a saltspoon. Goodbye, Sally. You can send Tiffany out with Sir John if you like and I'll bring her back when I come for the Governor's ball. I hope she knows her Collects well?”

At the Governor's ball, said Sally, dimpling and eager when Caroline was gone, Darien would come out. She had written Mr Lovel the most beautiful letter saying how grateful she was for his goodness and now she was finished and would be a lady for ever. But Jermyn was more interested in the rout to-night at Sir William Martin's. “You'll give me the first dance, Sally? I'm counting on it.”

“Oh … Mr Lovel always has that. He says it's correct. The second, Jermyn? May I have the second?”

Feeling the colour glowing in her face she was frightened. It must be wrong to be so glad Jermyn liked her, to find herself singing about the house for no reason, to want so often to kiss. Tiffany's dear roguish little face although knowing so well that Mr Lovel disapproved of demonstrations. It's just because Jermyn's kind and I'm so missing Darien, thought Sally, who was always running away from her head to confront her heart and then running back again.

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“Very well. The second,” said Jermyn in a queer voice and going away so abruptly that she knew she must have offended him. But how could she help it, she thought, hearing the tears in her voice as she instructed her own immigrant maid about the dinner. She must think of hymns. “The Lord of Love my Shepherd is….” No, no; don't think of love, Sally. Think of the sauce for Mr Lovel's pudding….

IV

Since England, having descried a virgin upon the horizon, had sent out Hobson to mend that, New Zealand (thought Jermyn) had become any man's Moll, poor dear; with whites pushing in everywhere, to be pushed on by indignant chiefs, and all the English at tantivy among themselves, while keeping a more or less stout front against the natives. A tragic sweet bewildered country, this New Zealand … who should have been left to dream among her ancient murmuring trees, along her golden beaches, instead of becoming a stamping-ground for pirates.

Yet Official Bay, home of the gentry, had by now quite a sprinkling of fine houses among the fern and scrub, with the Bishop's palace and the Chief Justice's mansion down near the water-front—to stopper them all up from harm, said Jack O'Reilly, going down with Jermyn to the Chief Justice's rout through a windy night that set their cloaks a-blowing. Two gay young bucks, very lively in the hot night, sniffing delicately at wallflower and stocks standing in the garden to retrieve English minds from wild thoughts garnered among wild odours on the hills.

“Damn it, I am English,” said Jermyn as though just now he had been something else.

Now the gentlemen were hanging their cloaks like a black row of dreams in a side-room, hearing the brittle page 89 feminine twitter across the hall. How many of these fellows had (like O'Reilly) a wife in old England and made hay while the sun shone just the same?

And here they were shouldering into the long low room, so seductive in soft candle-light with the gleam of white arms and bosoms, the gloss of ringlets, the bright sharp colour of flowers, of scarves, the sly enticement of moving fans, the mysterious provocation of half-turned cheeks … in short, all the weapons of dear woman and be damned to her, thought impecunious officers, certain that they should not marry and equally certain that they would.

“The second is a quadrille,” said Jermyn, inspecting his programme. “But you'll give me a waltz too, Sally?”

Here was a Sally radiant in glimmering green and grey with a silver garland for the bright brown hair smoothly rolling away from white temples. Youth and better ease had triumphed over the weary slave of Kororareka. Jermyn, scribbling initials here and there, felt with a start how young Sally really was. He had never known the Sal-volatile that Darien had known…. But wasn't this she laughing her fresh little laugh at old Sir Winston Chard (damned raddled old dandy with his flowered waistcoat and yellow wig, a seasoned left-over from the Regency, ogling and bowing …); laughing at Jermyn, at everything, at nothing, for it was so wonderful of Jermyn to want all those dances though of course he couldn't have them.

“Two only, sir,” cried Sally, holding up slim white-gloved fingers as Peregrine (his eyes were still too close together) took her away. This is living, thought Sally, gyrating primly. Before her marriage she had been too young for parties, and at first in Auckland she had been too tied … and tired. But now … these last few months … her blood was running like a merry millstream. This, thought Sally, trying to keep step with Mr Lovel, is living.

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From the wall Jermyn watched. A monstrous number of pretty girls to-night, but Sally shone among them like white fire. And at fifteen she had been married to long dark Peregrine who was stiffish even in his cups. God help her, thought Jermyn, feeling a sudden rage of pity that persisted even when he led her out for the quadrille.

But Sally was wanting no pity to-night. She wanted to romp, to sing; and the wave of her hand, the gay glance she flung him as she floated to centre with the ladies was assuredly Sal-volatile, corked up for so long and now disseminating a wild tingling essence, a stinging delight that would turn any man's head. “Tutti-tutti-tutti” went the regimental band, but Jermyn's heart was going faster. Something he did not understand was happening to him while he waited for her to come again. And when she came it was like Life itself advancing, lifting him from his petty days into some high and glorious realm untrod before, bringing benison in both small outstretched hands.

He did not refuse it. One does not refuse such rich gifts at their moment. Bowing, turning her, advancing, retreating, he saw all in a golden haze; saw her silver circlet a halo round her head, heard the band rattling through Fra Diavolo as a conqueror's paean. Still held by the enchantment he took her presently with her warm fragrance and shining eyes to the couch behind the fern-tree screen in a corner.

“Oh, I feel as if I had really caroused at last,” said Sally, sinking on the bright cushions and shutting her eyes with the sheer joy of it. She felt him bending over her; started, then met his look in a long gazing that passed for ever through the veils for them both. Gravely he stooped lower; then suddenly caught her close, meeting her parted lips with his.

Major Henry, twirling his moustachios, making a leg to the ladies, visiting like some errant bee whist-tables page 91 and supper-rooms, presently discerned the unmistakable legs of a man, the unmistakable shadowy skirts of Sally behind the ferns and backed off, muttering profanely.

So this was what she would be at, the minx, and no more than he might have expected since he had always considered Sally's morals too good to last. Major Henry (having had so much experience) instantly feared the worst, and his leathery cheeks reddened. No scandal allowed among Lovels, egad, and this cursed little town was a perfect witches' brew of scandal, with everyone pilloried in the papers for the pleasure of clubs and kettledrums. “Oh, my dear … so shocking! Have you heard …?” “He'll never call the fellow out. I wager that Peregrine Lovel….”

The Major could hear them at it, cap-lappets wagging and tea cooling; young bloods shouting with laughter, making their bets. Enraged for the first time at that generous licence which he so much enjoyed and aided, the Major anxiously patrolled the corner to keep invaders off and recalled the Maori proverb that all a man's troubles came from women and land. Good God, what a heritage that fool Adam had left his sons by his weak-kneed plea for a wife!

Behind the fern Jermyn sat with face hidden in his hands; but if Sally's face expressed what her heart felt he should have seen it shining through his fingers. So this was the interpretation of these last sweet months of secret joy, and now one deep kiss had declared the foolishness of secrets, the brevity of this little life of separation and pain. What were fifty or even sixty years of what Darien called virtuous promenade with Mr Lovel set against an eternity of bliss with Jermyn? Sally, who never saw life quite like other people (hadn't her first notion of the Annexation been England reaching out with a long toasting-fork?), flipped her fingers at sixty years.

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God, who had been wavering behind the inchoate gods for so long, returned triumphantly. Only God himself could have so blessed her. That kiss (thought Sally, conscious for the first time that real kisses are spiritual and not fleshly) came out of the immortal things; things so perfect and so stupendous that the few little years of Now could never have compassed it. It would not be so compassed. Out of the bright regions of Eternity it had come to seal her to Jermyn for ever.

Mr Lovel (one knew quite well) was for Now; but with For Ever ahead she could wait, thought Sally, so used to waiting. It would not be long, she thought, already flying to it, hearing the angels blow their welcoming trumpets…. “Fifty … or even sixty years isn't so very long, Jermyn,” she ventured. “Not compared with For Ever.”

“What are you talking about?” He raised his face, so suddenly gone haggard that she must be very gentle.

“I'm sure God wouldn't mind that one kiss, dear. It was only to explain. We can wait now we know we shall have Eternity. You see, Mr Lovel and I could never find each other in Eternity because we have no love to guide us. But you and I … it will be like a star, won't it? We'll find each other at once….”

“I don't know what the devil you're talking about.”

A frightening Jermyn, this; staring out of fierce eyes with his face so blotched with red, his elegance in such strange disarray. Sally stood up, grateful to her legs for bearing her since she had rather feared they wouldn't.

“I … I think you had better take me back to the others. Please don't feel we've been very wrong, Jermyn. I think God just wanted us to understand. Now we can wait, you see.”

He was swaying slightly as he stood. A big fellow, Jermyn, now that he had filled out. Well-made, said Major Henry, approving his narrow Lovel hips and broad shoulders.

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“You don't know much of men,” he said, very slowly. “For a married woman you don't know much of men.”

“I know you,” said Sally, feeling herself beginning to tremble.

“By God, you don't!” He gave a croak of a laugh, staring at her steadily with a bright flame in his eyes. Beyond the screen of leaves the band was reckless in a polka, languorous in a waltz. Light feet flew by, scattering jets of laughter, scraps of talk, perfume from roses, jasmine, lilies twined in gleaming floating hair. All so gay, thought Jermyn dazedly. All so gay … and here was a man for whom the solid ground had given way beneath his feet; an honest man who would not be honest any more.

“Hrumph,” coughed Major Henry, returning in a hurry as a couple approached the corner. “Sally! Are you there? Peregrine wants you,” he invented in a hurry. “Lost a button or something …” cried the Major to Sally coming out, fastening a glove with bent head. For Jermyn following he had only a “Good God!” of disgust. So he had put himself in all that fantique for Jermyn. “A pleasant evening, Major,” said Jermyn, going away.

“I have not found it so, sir,” snapped the Major, tucking Sally's hand under his arm and getting in a panic again to feel its trembling. She was looking … and Jermyn had looked … looked like…. And Jermyn was only a cousin of Peregrine's and a precious reckless fellow. And women were never any better than they should be. “For heaven's sake, don't sniff,” he said furiously, unaware that he was doing the sniffing. “I need a drink,” said Major Henry who usually did.

Getting ready for bed with Mr Lovel Sally still moved in the miracle. This bright revelation was yet too new to include the physical, and one man had already given her more than she wanted of that. Jermyn's kiss had been a pledge of something infinitely lovelier than marriage, page 94 and a woman needs a home for her heart as well as for her body. Much more, thought Sally, plaiting up the long brown ripples of her hair just as though everything had not a fairer colour, a sweeter sound … even Mr Lovel was a sweeter sound talking of Mrs Pinshon who had, it appeared, been particularly disagreeable tonight.

“An insufferable woman,” he said, poising the extinguisher above the candle, looking like an extinguished candle himself in his long nightshirt.

“She may get better when she's older,” suggested Sally, so sorry for a Mr Lovel who could be bothered by Mrs Pinshon.

“She will be worse,” said Mr Lovel, laying himself down like an oracle.

He slept, but Sally could not. The world seemed to have taken wings and flown right up to heaven. Heaven would be so full now, and she had always seen herself so lonely there. Darien and the children would (of course) have their own dear lovers and companions, but the best she had hoped for was to escape a Mr Lovel who would always be trying to improve the angels. Now she was rich. So rich that it was hard to lie still … hard to wait for those bounteous riches.

Oh, I'm afraid sixty years is going to be longer than I thought, whispered Sally, beginning to cry softly into her pillow.

V

Tiffany and Roddy (with sometimes Hemi and Eriti Fleete) had a private world where they trafficked gloriously with goats, giants, Maori tohungas, Queen Victoria, and a Chinese god called Pang out of a book of Major Henry's; and visits to Uncle John's farm were purgatory, thought Tiffany, because her world could never accompany her there. “Couldn't one of the boys page 95 go this time? It's so always me?” begged Tiffany, her warm-coloured little face so piteous under the bright curls that Sally was hard put to it to deliver Mr Lovel's dictum that as there were only girls at the farm it wouldn't be proper.

So Tiffany sighed (since parents always got the last word) and was presently tied into a clean checked sun-bonnet and bulging cotton pantalettes to accompany John, who had brought Belinda with him, to the farm in a bullock-dray.

John, quite the farmer now, would have enjoyed chewing a straw only he rather feared the child Linda, who always gave him away to Caroline.

So he chewed instead the proposition just advanced to him by Peregrine and felt humbly grateful. Old Peregrine was the man to make money. John, dang it, never would. Even those steers from which he had hoped so much had sold badly, the monthly market being overstocked. Must go in more for Clydesdales, as Peregrine advises. Army needs 'em, thought John, pushing back his wide cabbage-tree hat to glance at Belinda (all gloves, bonnet, and propriety) prim on the seat beside him.

Five girls to find husbands and dowries for, as Caroline was always reminding him. Five dull little pieces like Linda, thought John, turning with relief to ardent Tiffany with bonnet flying, weaving her own secret games of magic round the bullocks lurching up between wastes of burned blackened timber, lurching down to squelch through creeks of emerald mosses in woody dells. “Don't you want to run with Tiffy, Linda?” he asked.

“It is not genteel, papa,” answered Linda, putting papa in his place. John, stimulated by town, nearly pitched her out by the nape of her prim neck and the tail of her stiffened skirts. But where was the use? She would only get him into a row with Caroline, who was so full of rows already. Strive not, thou earthen pot, to break the wall. Somewhere he had read that and re- page 96 membered because, dang it, he was the earthen pot, producing no more than a superfluity of lesser pots.

Tiffany, wooing bush robins, coteries of tiny wrens, swinging in supple-jack loops with a bellbird ringing its chime for her, came at length to lie in dusty hay in the dray bottom and let the bush come round her in the gloaming which would so soon be dark. The bush had tremendous voices for Tiffany lying in the hay.

I was here first, the bush said, crowding close with its monstrous totaras and matais and kahikateas going straight up into the sky like dark towers laddered with vines where one could climb to heaven. I've been here always. I remember the sun when it was a baby and all the stars being born, and I don't like the white folk, said the bush, peering with ghostly eyes through the thick leaves.

It gave Tiffany a kind of muddy feeling to come from that vast sweet murmuring freshness outside into the stuffy ill-lit passage with red Aunt Caroline (in soiled apron and hung all over with chains and lockets) pecking her cheek and all the pale pig-tailed cousins in a row being shocked at the torn edging on her pantalettes.

“You are late, Sir John,” said Caroline. “But of course you never think of me.”

“Peregrine kept me. A suggestion, my dear. I'll lay a tenner you'll like it,” said John, trying to be cheery and kissing everyone.

“Pray where would I come by tenners … nor you neither?” retorted Caroline. Since John insisted that they should live in the bush he need never think she liked it. “I suppose you didn't bring me a maid? Even the dullest immigrant knows better than to bury herself in the bush, and I must say I never expected——”

“Is dinner ready? Girls, take Tiffany to wash her hands,” said John, curtly. Thank heaven he'd be rid of them soon. For all his faults Peregrine was a good brother.

Tiffany washed in a cracked basin, surrounded by little page 97 cousins twittering at her and Linda for news. Linda had information about lace fichus and a new pattern for quilting petticoats, and then they were all asking:

“What presents have you brought us, Tiffany?”

“Books,” murmured Tiffany, despairing. Presents, suggested by mamma, were always chosen by papa, who couldn't be told that books were considered an insult at the farm. This time it was Sanford and Merton and The Pilgrim's Progress in drab bindings. Linda and Sophia (being old enough to have absorbed gentility) said nothing; but Emily and Maria and Baby Lucilla burst into loud sobs.

“Oh, I did want a pair of button shoes….” “Oh, I did want a doll….” “Why don't you never bring us something pretty?”

Sophia said spitefully: “Well, you've got to do lessons with us every day you're here. Mamma says so. And you don't know as many hymns as I do.”

In the other room John was saying: “I have a proposition from Peregrine for you, my dear.”

“What does he expect to make out of it?” demanded Caroline, stooping over the big colonial fireplace where two camp-ovens and a black kettle hung on hooks. She handled the ovens with gloves … which she didn't use in conversation, thought John, explaining that now labour was so cheap Peregrine was building a house on his second section in Official Bay…. “He may sell it later, but in the meantime he offers it to you and the girls. I shall stay at the farm.”

“Wants an unpaid caretaker, does he? I won't go without a servant.” But Caroline's heart was leaping. Once she got into that house it would take more than Peregrine to get her out. “When will it be ready?” she asked….

Governesses had brought Tiffany as far as compound addition, and from the books she read at Major Henry's she knew all about Gulliver, Buddha, and other interesting gentlemen. But under Aunt Caroline all the children page 98 wrote “Be good and you will be happy” in sand-boxes and did addition on their fingers. “How else can you be certain? I won't have you guessing,” said Aunt Caroline, black and upright as a ruler.

“But I always guess right,” pleaded Tiffany, pushing up her bronze curls. “And I'm scarcely ever happy when I'm good.” Then she upset her sand-box, and Emily giggled until Caroline boxed her ears, since Tiffany was privileged until they got into the new house. Emily shrieked, and Sophia (so temperamental) began to cry. “Jerusalem, my happy home,” she wailed. But Caroline had no patience with happy homes, and Linda was more than usually complaining when they went to bed.

“Papa has no notion of progress or we'd live in town too. I vow it is quite shocking for Lady Lovel and the Misses Lovel to be on a farm like immigrants. For of course we are more ladies than you,” said round-eyed Linda, rubbing buttermilk right down her neck as a proof of gentility.

“He's breeding stud cattle that'll help the country more than anything,” declared Tiffany, very stout for Uncle John.

“Breeding! La, how coarse you are. That comes from associating with Maoris. Do come to bed, Tiffy. I detest being cold in bed. I wish I were old enough to be married and have someone to warm my toes on every night.”

Tiffany came reluctantly. Buttermilk smelt, and Linda would cuddle so.

“I'm glad I sleep alone,” she said dreamily. “I like lying straight and rather cold and pretending I'm out under the stars with the fern rustling all round and just one little morepork owl calling back in the bush.”

“La! What horrid notions you do have. I don't think they're quite respectable,” said Linda, cuddling her plump little body in close.