In a land ruled crazily by an experimental Colonial Office; by the military whose only function seemed to be to destroy; by a Governor who coddled the Maoris (Governor Grey's Native Schools and Hostels, forsooth!) and by newspapers which, without the curb of libel laws and with invective an honoured exercise, were positively dangerous—in this land sober gentlemen endeavouring to provide some kind of stability for their increasing families so definitely ceased to be sober that dinner-parties became impossible for ladies' ears.

As for the dark little Mechanic's Institute in Auckland's Chancery Lane (called The Dustbin by the Chronicle), so many chairs were broken at the nightly meetings that it was quite unsafe to stand on one, and Major Henry did it at his peril when he rose to shout that somebody ought to be hung. “Why should we all go bankrupt in the effort to please everybody?” he demanded.

Gentlemen demurred strenuously at this, explaining that their last desire was to please everybody … certainly not to please Grey, whose continued refusal to execute England's Imperial Seal and Charter for self-government, granted more than a year ago, had the country fiercely by the ears. The Settlers' Constitutional Association should do something. Why didn't it, they demanded, forgetting that they were part of it themselves. Very bewildered were the gentlemen who had been trained in English public schools, where learning how to be settlers had not been on the curriculum.

Jermyn gave them electric shocks twice weekly in the page 100 Chronicle, but it was Peregrine's business to apply soporifics, and now he got up to do it.

“Gentlemen, we must have a little patience.…”

“Patience, sir! With that bloody Grey treating us like rebellious infants wanting spanking?” protested old Barnes, his eyes popping out of his crimson face.

“We really must consider the obligations, sir,” said Peregrine, always disliking interruptions. “The Charter gives voting powers to all who can read and write and therefore disfranchises the bulk of the Maoris. This is certainly not in accord with the Waitangi Treaty….”

“Bunkum!” shouted Major Henry, his loyalty to Lovels suddenly exploding; “you know England wishes the Treaty to hell. So do you and everyone else….”

He was drowned in a yell of “Hear, Hear!” For robust colonists, building houses, building roads, importing blooded stock and producing families, were in no mind to remain in leading-strings for ever, while the midlands were still in an uproar because no one could get on the land there.

“Perish dictatorship. Let's shoot the hound,” proposed Sir Winston Chard, his yellow wig over his ear.

“We'll write to England about it,” said Corny who (though growing very bloated now) still seemed to believe in England.

Never any sense from them, thought Peregrine, begging gentlemen to remember that Grey had at least procured for them the military force denied to other governors….

Jermyn went out into the windy night. This continual useless bulling and baiting over the fair body of New Zealand was nothing to him now. He had a nearer and dearer body to think of, and the consciousness of that was chaos in his soul. Red lanterns outside the dingy taverns mocked at his darkness. Are you, they asked, the honourable man who had no pity on poachers? Are you the page 101 jester who mocked at colonels climbing through back-windows? Where are you going yourself now?

Jermyn didn't know. In desperate disorderly fashion his mind went round and round. There were things no decent man could do … yet so many did them. A gentleman should have strength to master his illicit passions … yet how many didn't.

“Oh God!” cried Jermyn to this God who gave no answers. So burgeoning sweet his love could be but for Peregrine, that impeccable angel with the fiery sword barring the way.

Struggle as he might to fly temptation, naughty Fate thrust it against him next day when he saw Sally promenading with Peregrine in the Government House Gardens where the regimental band played on Thursdays. Very gay, the Gardens; very turquoise and saffron and violet and rosy-pink with bonnets and rustling gowns and long fringed shawls. Very full of charming young ladies demure under floating veils and dragooned by tightly and brightly upholstered mammas whose tortoiseshell lorgnettes missed so many billets-doux slipped from an experienced dog-skin glove to a fluttering one of white kid. Top-hatted gentlemen in black or grey frocks were being domestic with each a wife upon his arm; swaggering whiskered officers were ogling; “pompa-pompa” went the scarlet band under the wide puriris and karakas. Old Sir Winston Chard in an orange waistcoat and with the green cotton umbrella which he carried even with yachting-clothes flitted like a butterfly from one blushing fair to another.

Not the place, thought Jermyn, bitter under a puriri-tree, to encounter Sally floating in dove-colour and a white bonnet with a little pink rose-wreath inside it; but Major Henry, pecking at delight like a red-beaked parrot, was charmed. The Quality, he told Peregrine, was clearly designed by Providence to be the glass of fashion, the mould of form even in earth's remotest places. Qua- page 102 lity alone is the natural promenader, the natural example to the baser-born.

“What, cried the Major, becoming quite lyrical, could be finer than the contemplation of Lovels strolling just like this down the evolution of New Zealand; doing what must be done with an elegance, a grace that redeemed it from its raw vulgarity; engrafting a tradition of the Old English Aristocracy on this crude land which, having gaped upon Lovels to the full, would hereafter move with more gentility about its business.

“Dear me,” said Sally, a little dry over this trumpeting of Lovels, since half Auckland was peopled by the old English aristocracy…. And there was Jermyn, looking like Lucifer fallen from heaven, in a high-collared mulberry coat and curly beaver and the kisses that Tiffany said Were always in his eyes. (Oh, Jermyn, don't come and speak to me. I can't bear it just now, Jermyn.) “Yes, Mr Holland, it is indeed a sad pity that Government House has burned down. I hear the Governor's ball will be in a barn.”

“A confounded pity Grey didn't burn in it,” declared Major Henry, ogling the ladies. Once the heavy dragoon, the Major still occasionally stamped a foot to make his spurs ring which (when he wore them) had much ravished the ladies. He walked on with Sally, helping collect the verbal bouquets offered her. Oh, essential promenaders, the Lovels! Always in the news. Here came Jermyn, very elegant and remote between Miss Martha Pinshon and her scraggy mamma. Surely the boy had more wit than to marry there. No money, no breedin'. “Hallo, what have you been up to, Jermyn?”

“Reviving my memory of Biblical quotations,” said Jermyn, keeping his eyes off Sally, though knowing well how the laces were rising and falling on her breast, how white she had gone to the very lips. For God's sake, he almost cried to Peregrine, give her to me, man! Can't you see how it is between us? Jermyn, having never page 103 been disciplined like Sally, was quite certain that he couldn't bear much of this.

For all her disciplined life Sally suddenly found that Jermyn's voice with its deep warm shadows was shaking Eternity to pieces. It was too long to wait. Too long without the sunrise and the bird-song and the jubilant sweep of great waters. Too long before she could pluck a flower for a buttonhole and pin it in his coat. And there might not be buttonhole bouquets in Eternity. Nor coats….

“Come, my dear,” said Mr Lovel, walking on, walking Sally back into the proper place for wives. But her feet would not stay there. They were running with her heart after Jermyn who would not look at her. “My dear,” said Mr Lovel, irritably, “pray do keep step.”

“Yes, Mr Lovel,” said Sally, trying….

II

True English colonists, prepared to run their heads against any wall in preference to hunting for gates like a swineherd, egad, continued to vociferate against Grey, who probably felt that England was asking rather much of one spare gentleman in frock-coat and checked trousers. With an empty treasury he could buy no land for distribution. With Maoris everywhere engaged in private warfare he could get no titles clear. With the Waitangi Treaty (that inviolate Magna Carta of the Maoris) hanging over his head, he could not even grab. And all over the country little settlements—chiefly housed in tents or on wheels so that they could move on when the Maoris claimed the land—were declaring themselves with loud cries, often protesting that they had been there for years, and nobody cared.

Grey, who had been born a dictator and had made himself another, sent military expeditions to tell the settlements that, being unauthorized, they did not exist.

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And the expeditions, much encumbered by forty-pound packs, high chokers and long flintlock Brown Besses, got lost in the towering bush for weeks, discovered settlements which had been discovered so often that they were tired of it, enraged the Maoris who suspected them of putting down survey-pegs, and then returned to be very drunken in barracks and write long Home letters mentioning mosquitoes and steaming wet infernos. Meanwhile they cost the country so much that Auckland was going quite bankrupt and gentlemen's top-hats were losing their gloss, while as for the ladies (dear souls) the number of turned gowns and little unexpected bows hiding spots testified to the state they were in.

Yet since, no one must carp at his family, Peregrine took Sally and Darien round to Commercial Bay by row-boat (only gentlemen walked the rough track over the hill) and there spent the worth of his latest-built cutter on such fallals, such quantities of white silk-muslin and soft blue satin the colour of Sally's eyes that Sally was overcome by remorse to the extent of kissing his cheek and then overcome much further by his surprise. “I … I only wanted to show my appreciation,” she faltered.

“Quite unnecessary,” said Peregrine, really annoyed, because Darien was present at the scene. “Such demonstrations suggest that you imagine I doubt your appreciation and affection. I assure you I never do that.”

Such a new outlook on conjugal felicity comforted Sally amazingly. Now she need never kiss a man again until she and Jermyn kissed in Eternity. She shut her eyes with a little shiver. Eternity was so far away. Further even than Jermyn, who was being so noble in never coming to see her that one could almost wish he wasn't … only one mustn't, thought Sally, getting very mixed over rights and wrongs.

So the little seamstress who was so skilful she could talk with her mouth full of pins came daily, and the morning-room frothed and billowed with endless flounces page 105 and laces and ribbons, and Darien always in a dressing-gown. Such a tall slender Darien, overtopping Sally; Darien with her glorious head of curls, her skin like rose-leaves, her lovely curving arms. How happy Sally would be to have Darien calling her Sal-volatile again; and Darien looking so hard at her sometimes that she felt herself going red right down her neck.

She's got a lover, thought Darien, quite excited. I'll find out who he is when I have time. So Sally could wait while billows were piled on snowy billows, while petticoats swelled and foamed with delicate lace, and ribbons and roses looped up the billows and ran into patterns on a filmy scarf.

At last the white satin slippers went on over the cotton stockings, the white rosebud wreath was pinned among her curls, and Darien stood before the long mirror with every lamp and candle in the house about her and declared she felt like a choir of angels in a shrine.

“Oh, I wish I were a man for a minute so I could kiss me,” she cried. “Sal-volatile, did you ever see anyone so ravishing before?”

Butter, she felt, had indeed been served her in a lordly dish, and all the young bucks' heads would soon be around her feet on chargers. But Jermyn's head she would take upon her breast … that white firm young breast which Caroline (magnificent in an orange velvet gown and party-colour gauze turban) declared to be most immodestly revealed.

“Your shoulders are too thin, Darien,” she said, conscious how voluptuous (without indelicacy) were her own. “And I always think your colour quite consumptive. You should take brimstone-and-treacle and catnip tea. I'm giving it to all the girls now. They have such shocking boils.”

“Darien has no boils,” said Sally, indignant, and helping Darien worship that white bright vision in the pier-glass.

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“They occur at any moment,” asserted Caroline, trying to get in front of the glass herself. “Shall I wind this chain three times round my neck or leave it negligee? One can't be too careful with boils. Probably Darien has one coming now. I'll be bound she don't drench enough. I always keep my children thoroughly drenched.”

Caroline's little girls, thought Sally, had the pale drowned look of immature fish swimming deep. She glanced thankfully at sturdy sun-browned Tiffany sitting in adoration on the floor.

“Do we look nice, darling?” Sally asked a little wistfully.

Tiffany flushed. Little girls were so seldom expected to have opinions.

“I-I think you're like the Madonna in the big Bible, mamma. And Aunt Darien is a … a Christmas lily and the Fairy Queen.”

“And what am I?” demanded Caroline, adding an amethyst brooch to the three already so unhappy on the orange velvet.

“I'd rather not say,” murmured Tiffany, wishing the floor would swallow her up before she had to. But darling Aunt Darien was running across the room, dropping her the loveliest curtsy.

“Thank you, sweet, for sparing our feelings,” cried Darien. “We do what we can, but I know it's so little in the presence of such splendour.” You could pull Caroline's leg from here to Tophet and she never knew. So that danger was over, with Caroline kindly assuring them that they really looked very well, after all, and Tiffany ready to cry with the beautifulness of mamma and Aunt Darien muffling up in burnouses and shawls when papa came for them. She hurried Roddy up the stairs to her attic-room, imploring him with tears popping down her cheeks:

“Let's play something quick, Roddy. They're too lovely to live. I know they'll die.”

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Roddy, rumpling up his thick fair hair, considering her with his kind brown eyes, understood in a minute. “We'll play they're both Cinderella going to the ball. And Aunt Caroline is the three ugly sisters.”

“Oh, Roddy! And of course Uncle Jermyn is the Prince,” cried Tiffany. Would there ever be a trouble Roddy couldn't put right, she thought, offering gratefully to be Aunt Caroline, but Roddy said the towel-horse would do for her.

A beggared uncrowned prince Jermyn felt himself to be, entering the long military fodder-barn turned by that magician, Governor Grey, into the most elegant of ballrooms; with marquees and out-buildings for supper and sitting-out, and ten pounds of the best sperm candle scraped upon the floor, and Governor Grey and his lady up on a red dais sitting a little higher than the chaperons. He knows that every man here to-night is cursing him and he don't care a damn, thought Jermyn.

“Gad! There's a beauty,” said O'Reilly at his side. “A fine filly, sir,” agreed a fat colonel, and Jermyn looked up to see Darien sinking in a white foam before the Governor with that curtsy which was so shortly to become famous.

Jermyn's eyes rested on her absently. She looks well to-night, he thought; saw Sally standing a little apart and went to her like a needle to its magnet. “Oh, Jermyn! Isn't Darien glorious?” cried Sally, glowing out of her blue gown.

“Blast Darien! How many dances can I have?”

Sally began to tremble because Jermyn should be used to Eternity by now, and how could she ever be if he wasn't?

“I … I can't dance to-night, Jermyn. I'm chaperoning Darien, and a chaper——”

“Come, my dear,” said Peregrine, with Darien already on his arm. “Our seats are on the dais,” he added, quite gracious since, if the symptoms he saw around him were correct, this abominable girl would soon be off his hands page 108 for good. The expenditure had been justified, thought Peregrine, pulling up his stock and listening to the compliments (which were fashionably florid and lengthy), watching Darien being so modest with her big white feather fan while her programme filled up.

I must be careful, thought Darien, feeling excitement boil in her until she wanted to whoop and jump. This is heaven at last, she thought, beginning to glide in the arms of the Governor's aide who held her divinely close. After bumping round with Elvira, with Sarah Wells, who was so hot and hugging, this was heaven. Once she had thought she knew it with the dancing-master; but after he had tried to kiss her behind the whatnot that was the end of him. Darien didn't intend to have her reputation blown on before she had made it.

“What blest spot has had the joy of harbouring you until now?” murmured the aide, bending a stiff pomatumed head.

“Why … I have just left school,” said Darien with wide innocent eyes.

“A school for scandal, eh? I'll wager all the masters fought duels over the chance of just one smile from those fair lips.”

“Oh, sir!” murmured Darien, looking down. This was such fun that she almost forgot Jermyn—who was probably speechless with admiration and jealousy in some corner. I shan't keep those dances for him much longer, she thought; enjoying the quadrille almost better, with so many eager hands reaching and lingering, so many languishing eyes, so many inspired young bloods doing the pigeonwing in homage to that seduction which Nick Flower had told her would be the curse of men.

It was a pity Nick Flower was not here to see her conquest, but perhaps someone would tell him about it. In the meantime she had never dreamed that anyone could be so happy; that a brass band could so fill the world with page 109 melody, that a man's arm about her waist could twitch and tighten and keep on tightening….

If I could dance for ever it seems to me I wouldn't have to wear stays, thought Darien, panting a little in the gallop and wondering if she were perspiring. No, Mrs Williams said that ladies didn't perspire. Well, anyway, she was doing all that ladies were allowed to do.

The regimental band swung from quadrille to waltz and back again. The long room gleamed; white arms and shoulders gleamed, colour was a delirium of azure, pink and pearly-white, and a thousand brilliancies more—of floating scarves entangling in epaulettes and being released with pretty shrieks, of scarlet jackets, black coats, jewels, ringlets floating glossily, perfumed side-whiskers going off with the ringlets to supper, champagne bubbling in crystal glasses, gentlemen being very merry at the buffet, Caroline bouncing like a stray orange down the centre with the Governor in Sir Roger….

But many gentlemen were not entirely happy because, being unable to quarrel about Grey while drinking the man's wine, they had to find another topic. Old Barnes supplied one with the Harbour Board, which was attempting to get Auckland out to deep water by casting spoil from the hills over the mud-flats and laying streets atop to keep it there.

“A child's game. We need new blood, sir,” he bellowed at Peregrine, who had been Chairman of the Board for a year. “Yes, an' we'll put it in at the next election, too. Flower … you know Nick Flower, all of you? (So many gentlemen looked uncomfortable that it was presumed that they did.) Well, he's the sort. Sticks at nothin'. Dredges, he says, and I'll lay it's gotter be dredges. At this rate our grandchildren may see deep-water ships berthing at our wharves. We never will.”

Talk of Flower always stiffened Peregrine. Will nothing rid me of this traitor, he thought, longing for Wol-sey's slayers. He said affaby—for let a man think you page 110 agree with him and he is half-won already: “Dredges would be excellent. I have already inquired for English estimates. We might get a suitable one delivered here for about five thousand pounds, but I fear we would need at least three.”

“Ur,” said old Barnes, his lip dropping. More taxes, eh? Not for him.

“Get that scoundrel Flower to pay for 'em with the money he's making by smuggling war material,” said Major Henry, beginning to bubble with the champagne.

“When Greek meets Greek….” began Sir Winston, but the gun-running was always so many red rags to bulls. They all began roaring together, so Major Henry went away to talk to Sally—who was not on the dais where she should have been. Jermyn … ? he thought with a stound of fear. But Jermyn (also so palpably not where he should be) was equally likely to be where he should not.

Alarm and champagne strove in Major Henry. Jermyn had no conscience, and Sally … the Lord help her, thought the Major; but (being aware by now that the Lord seldom hurried) he set about doing it himself, interrupting three proposals and a quarrel in green bowery out-houses and marquees, and never finding Sally engaged in one of them. Terrible, he thought, searching frantically. No breath allowed on female Lovels, egad, though the males might (and did) give a fillip to life now and then.

Out among the flax and manuka Jermyn was giving Sally so many fillips that she had nothing to meet them with but tears. She had come with him, thinking he had a message from Mr Lovel, but anything less like a message from Mr Lovel it was impossible to imagine. “Oh, don't, don't,” she wept while Jermyn's intensest convictions swept over her in a flood.

Love (declared Jermyn, who seemed quite beside himself) came from God and was not meant to be denied. Sally didn't know what love was. Peregrine did not. page 111 Jermyn, it seemed, was the only one who did, and he made such a beautiful destroying angel of it that Sally's little twitters about Eternity got her less than nowhere. Wouldn't Jermyn do all a man could do for her—and didn't he deserve anything for that? Wasn't he haunted by her day and night? And didn't he deserve anything for that? “Do you expect me to go to my grave in this torment?” demanded Jermyn of a trembling Sally seeing ancient Jermyns hobbling without their deservings into yawning vaults. “By God, it's true enough that a woman has no heart.”

“Oh, Jermyn, you must understand….”

But Jermyn, having so thoroughly let go of himself, was afraid to stop and understand. There were limits, he told her, to patience, to repression. Limits (it appeared) to everything but love. “I cannot do without you and I won't,” he cried, trying to take her in his arms.

She felt herself pushing him back with both hands on his breast. She felt as though pushing herself back too … back from the longing, the terrible aching longing … “Another word and I'll never speak to you again,” she cried, not believing that it was her own voice saying it, her own body that dodged suddenly under his arm and carried her at a run into the house, where she took cover among blue curtains in the ladies' dressing-room, explaining to the startled maid that she had a cold.

“A mustard bath is the best thing, madam,” said the maid to a Sally feeling mustard all over her burning skin, her burning eyes, her burning heart. Please God let him find comfort in Eternity, prayed Sally, unable to discover any there herself.

This, thought Jermyn, returning later to the brilliant barn, is how a whipped cur feels, I suppose. Tail between his legs and yet wanting to bite. A radiant Darien was the first person who presented herself to be bitten; dismissing her partner outside a marquee and walking Jermyn off. page 112 “I kept this dance for you,” said Darien, determined to have no more nonsense. “But we'll sit it out.”

“As you please,” said Jermyn wearily. His madness was spent, but he could see nothing but those little brown tendrils at the nape of Sally's neck twisting round his heart, strangling it, and Darien's chatter went by him on the wind.

Sitting with him on a puffy blue satin settee behind tree-ferns, Darien was perplexed that she did not swoon with joy at having got Jermyn to herself at last, disordered though he appeared. But so many gentlemen were disordered by this time of night, she thought, willing to make allowances. And that wild look, like a corsair or a pirate, became him monstrous well. Quite ready to be pirated by Jermyn she leaned toward him, laid her hand on his.

“Do I look nice to-night, Jermyn?”

The soft caressing touch sent shocks through him. Glancing round he saw radiance, warmth, a quite delirious enchantment of invitation shedding lovely benison on him. Fragrance of hair and sweet young flesh, ripe lips half-parted for the kissing. With a sighing groan he took what the gods and Darien offered. But even in the kiss those soft lips turned to Dead-Sea apples. They were not Sally's, and he let her go in confused anger as she cried:

“Jermyn, do you love me? Do you really?”

“No,” he said, getting up, alarmed to find how he was shaking. “No. I … I beg your pardon. I … I'm drunk, I think,” he said, conscious that he must soon be drunker or go mad.

“Well, I didn't really expect you to at once,” said Darien kindly. “But you soon will. It's my seduction, you know. Mr Flower said I had it, and I seem to be seducting everybody to-night.”

“Congratulations,” said Jermyn vaguely. He took her back to the ball-room and went home to Major Henry's page 113 rum-cask, which was three parts full. A brave and happy ending to a successful evening, he thought.

III

MrLovel was making matters clear to females next morning at prayers, reading from St Paul, who seemed to be the special advocate of the gentlemen. “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection,” read Mr Lovel sonorously, with sunlight on the back of Roddy's neck, of Brian's where they knelt hunched at their chairs, softly passing marbles back and forth; with shadow on Tiffany's clasped hands and eager little face composed into the puzzled reverence prayers always brought there. “But I suffer not a woman to teach,” read Mr Lovel loud above the faint click of the marbles, “nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence….”

So very definite, St Paul, thought Sally, trying to keep little Jerry quiet and watching Darien smiling at herself in the sideboard mirror. Such an excellent friend to the gentlemen. As for Sally and Darien and Tiffany, St Paul promised that they should be saved in childbirth if they behaved themselves….

“Amen,” pronounced Mr Lovel, rising with dignity.

“Oh, God, please don't let me hate Mr Lovel,” prayed Sally, running upstairs to dive into linen-closets and hurry the maids about their work. So difficult to remember the names of maids who, having arrived in New Zealand with the sole intention of making a speedy marriage, proved so speedy at it that one never knew where they were.

As for Tiffany, she had long ceased to pray “Our Father,” feeling that one was more than enough. In the bush-gully below the house which pioneers had somehow overlooked in their haste to destroy all that was New Zealand and make her another England as soon as might be, Tiffany prayed to the little Maori god that Hemi Fleete had hacked for her out of a rich red totara-heart, while page 114 Roddy played on a flute left behind at Lovel Hall by an officer returned to England.

Wonderful magic in the flute for Roddy, trampling about on the maidenhair, the soft green mosses; blowing heaven out in shining bubbles round him, hearing the blare of glorious trumpets, the far sweet singing of sirens on enchanted shores. If only he could play the death of Mark Antony. Conquering trumpets, sorrowful sirens in that. “I am dying, Egypt, dying …” played Roddy as best he could for the shivers running down his back.

On her knees by the bright thread of the stream that made drooping flax-blades whistle softly, Tiffany prayed to the stiff little god with its blank paua-shell eyes.

“Listen, Tane. I will try to be good. I will comb all my hair-tangles and try not to ask questions or despise Brian because he's a tell-tale. I'll try not to hate Sophia, for I s'pose she can't help it and damnation will get her anyway. I will try to love Our Father, for p'raps he's nicer than papa….”

She sighed, jerking her curls out of her eyes. Weighty promises, and hard to keep; especially the one about Our Father, who was a very whiskered gentleman sitting on a cloud in the big Family Bible. Tiffany always wondered what he did when there were no clouds, but one couldn't ask grown-ups—not even mamma, who knelt by her bed with tender good-night kisses. More than the generations separated well-brought-up children (who always stood up when parents came in and mustn't speak unless spoken to) from the fount of knowledge.

“Now, Tane, I've promised you all I'm going to to-day and you'll have to be content with that,” said Tiffany, feeling the refreshment that follows a satisfactory confessional and rising to see Roddy standing with his brown eyes strange.

“I nearly saw Mark Antony,” he whispered.

“Oh!” cried Tiffany who knew that Mark Antony was page 115 dead. “Did you get right into heaven? What does God sit on?”

“No. Oh, I wish you could understand,” cried Roddy, desperate with his inability to proclaim the terrible beauty of everything to an unseeing world. “Some day I shall go off by myself and … and have lovely things all round me.”

“Will papa let you?” asked Tiffany since papa let them do so little they liked.

The boy's radiance faded. Up his sleeve youngest Brian laughed at papa exacting continual ceremonies, but Roddy feared him. In spite of conquering trumpets, he knew that he could not conquer papa. “Well, you needn't have reminded me of him, Tiffy.”

“P'raps he'll be dead some day, and then you can,” said Tiffany, the consoler. “I wish mamma hadn't married him. It would be so much nicer without a papa at all.”

“You're always wishing,” said Roddy, aching with his own wishes. “Come home.”

Tiffany came. Brothers would some day be men and therefore must be obeyed. I wish I were my own brother, she thought, riding that sunny afternoon with Brian and Hew Garcia up past the creaking windmill that ground Auckland's corn on Karangahape Road and through the scrub beyond to sit outside a Maori whare. Brian, already one of the fastidious Lovels, would never go in a whaxe, although there was usually a pot of boiling water to pour on the floor to kill some of the fleas.

Hew had come for a little greenstone heitiki, and sat in the sun polishing it with a silk handkerchief. This form of Tiki, the first Maori god, should be polished by wearing next the skin for generations; but Hew, being English, couldn't wait for that. He looked very ruddy and English among the fat Maori women, easy in their one garment, plaiting little green-flax baskets for kai; among the fat brown men lazily slicing fragrant yellow page 116 shavings off half-made canoe-paddles, or carving the ceremonial tops.

Niggers, thought Brian, who was rapidly imbibing Auckland's opinions. He wanted to be gone, but Hew, who always liked to air his knowledge, would talk; and since he was twelve and much stronger than lean dark little Brian there didn't seem anything to do about it.

“Tiki made men out of red clay and women out of echoes,” said Hew. “So all women are only echoes. Do you hear, Tiffany? You are only my echo, so you must agree with everything I say.”

“I can't if it isn't true,” objected Tiffany, nursing two little pigs.

“It would be true of course. But you must agree anyway,” declared Hew, staring at her under his thick dark brows. She had somehow acquired a new interest since her aunt was the toast of the town, and he had even discussed with Brian what men found in women to want to provide for them. “They don't want to,” said Brian who, complained his teachers, knew so little that he should and so much that he should not. “Women hook them. They always do.”

On the edge of sentimental adolescence in a land where responsibilities came early (he had ridden alone after the goats before he was five) Hew wondered if Tiffany would ever hook anybody. More likely to take a deal of hooking, with her dignified ways and that straight little freckled nose. Hew felt that Tiffany's mouth would be nice to kiss—fresh and crisp like a salty wave stinging you…. He was rather ashamed of thinking like that about Tiffany who, though generous with her belongings, might be called ungenerous with herself. Virginal was the word, but Hew didn't know it. He knew that he couldn't maul Tiffany as he mauled Belinda when no one was about. Tiffany said:

“A po-pofessing Christian shouldn't believe in Maori gods.”

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“I never said I believed.” Hew got up, pocketing the heitiki. He no longer wanted to kiss Tiffany. “You can't tell the truth….”

“I can,” shrieked Tiffany, flying at him. “Cursed be thy incomings and thy outgoings.”

“Good, my girl,” said Brian, sniggering. Tiffany at any rate found some value in morning prayers. Hew avoided her onrush, suddenly disconcerted.

“I don't fight girls. I'm going. Come, Brian.”

Brian, who specially disliked Tiffany tumultuous and nursing pigs, got his pony, and the two rode off into the tall manuka-trees, leaving Tiffany dumb with horror at herself, conscious that she had suddenly wanted to scratch Hew, bite bits out of him. Often in her rebellions against rules she bit her arms and the ends of her curls, but she had never before wanted to bite other people. And she had cursed … after telling Tane she would be good too. Our Father would surely come off his cloud and kill her. Hoping that he would get her before papa did, since Brian would certainly tell papa, she scrambled on her pony and pelted off to Corny Fleete's, feeling that if she couldn't soon see kindly understanding Hemi she'd die.

In Corny's big untidy house Haini Fleete sat all day, weaving glowing mats for her tribal relations, with her daughters sorting the bright piles of dyed flax and feathers on the floor. Haini would look so splendid in mats, said Tiffany, stroking their softness, and Haini's voice sounded mysterious and far off like the witch of Endor as she answered:

“One day I think all Maoris will wear the mat again. Do not wait for the dark, little Tihane. Rehu Pai is still unburied.”

All Maoris dread the dark, particularly when an unburied ghost is about. Tiffany said, hesitating: “Isn't Hemi anywhere?”

“He is flying the new kite … the manu aute. He wants a good omen.” Tiffany knew all about kites, just as she page 118 knew all about the spinning-tops as big as your head which the young men whipped over ditches and hedges to make themselves strong and deep-breathed in battle. Every Maori game was a preparation for battle. Hemi's new kite had a head like a man, with shells rattling inside, and to fly it over an enemy's pa was very bad for the mana of all the chiefs there. “Is Hemi going to fight?” Tiffany asked.

“Ana pea. Who knows? Go, Tihane. We have not seen the little green lizards, but they must have come for Rehu Pai.”

Tiffany rode hastily home through an equally hasty sunset, for the North does not dally on the confines of light and dark. The world seemed far and strange and very still. Against a saffron West night had already come to the long height of the Waitakeres. Shadows groped here and there with ghostly fingers. Mount Eden was disappearing. There was a mist on Mount Albert. They were going back into the dark to remember when they had been spouting volcanoes, tremendous Maori pas instead of only deserted butts too scrubby to climb. The distant dull clank of cattle-bells in the manuka sounded so lonely….

“Oh, go quick, Selim,” gasped Tiffany, who hadn't yet been able to rid herself of belief in Rienga, that mysterious cape in the far North where, escorted by the little green lizards, every Maori soul has to go after its body is buried in two halves of a canoe and stuck up in an outhouse or a tree. At Te Rienga the soul slings itself into the sea by a branch and enters Te Po … the Darkness. But what happened to it then not even Hemi could tell her.

Down the hill a few belated Maoris moved with torches, for there is no protection from a wandering ghost except poking a lighted torch in its eye. Tiffany had no torch as defence against the ghostly soul of Rehu Pai. For the first time she thought of the soul as separate from the body, and cold tremors ran over her. Would it be raw page 119 and red like a new baby, or would it grow to be a giant when it got out of bent old Rehu Pai? Was that the soul moaning in the bracken, turning up the white sides of the tussock in search of the little green lizards … ?

In Rehu Pai's house all the old women would be howling the tangi, crying: “Go! Travel the long road. Go to the majority lost in darkness;” cutting their wrinkled cheeks and breasts with the sharp pipi-shell; while men would be skinning animals for the feast, and Rehu Pai, sitting alone with all his best mats and weapons and plates and knives hung on the fence behind him, would be watching his poor soul hunting for the lizards….

There was the soul, big as a giant, waving its arms at her out of the dark…. The tall pale clump of toitoi grass turned its feathery fronds as she galloped by, screaming heartily with terror. Then the pony put his foot in a hole, and the one pommel in the pad-saddle was not enough to keep Tiffany there.

Hemi found her limping through the grey dusk with face set against the world. He had a torch, and in the wild blown light his tawny face with the thin English lips was lovelier to Tiffany than an angel's. She gripped him with frantic hands.

“Oh, Hemi, I've been so wicked, and the ghost upset Selim and he's gone home. Hemi, you won't let Rehu Pai have me, will you? I don't want to go to Te Po.”

At thirteen big Hemi was on the edge of Maori manhood and receiving private instruction from the priestly tohungas about the Books of Life and Death and his own exalted ancestry which went back and back like the Begats in the Bible. Soon (Haini had said, standing among her flowing hair like a prophetess) Hemi must run away to the great chief in the Waikato who was his grandfather and like the mighty rata-tree wherein a thousand birds nested and a thousand ferns and vines took root. There Hemi would go through the long and painful initiation into a warrior's status and have cut on his smooth young page 120 cheeks the special double-spiral which (like a duke's strawberry-leaves) would leave no doubt of his birth.

Hemi, conscious that he should want to go much more than he did, shyly offered Tiffany his arm, just as white men did their women, and felt somehow crowned when she clung to it, as though she had made him all white. Yet he didn't want to be white, and he despised his white father. Oh, where do I belong? thought Hemi, taking Tiffany past the mill heavy on Maori land as though it would bend and break it … and the Maoris down here didn't care. They were not like the warriors of Nene and Hone Heke. They tilled ground for the white man and pushed his barrows and drove his bullocks. They were learning to drink the white man's Stinking Water and shame their birth. And the English soldiers had proud stomachs and called the Maoris nigger, and the new kite would not fly….

“Nothing is the same now, Tihane,” said Hemi, dimly feeling the weight of a dying race on his young shoulders.

In the Domain, as they passed through it, two old Maori gentleman squatted outside a reed whare, cooking their supper in red embers. The one with the black pipe (whispered Hemi, pausing) was Te Rauparaha, once too great a chief for a Maori to name. But after the Nelson trouble the English made him a prisoner for a year on a man-of-war, and now it pleased him to attend Governor Grey at levees, wearing a naval uniform as a delicate suggestion that his sojourn afloat had not been at all what people imagined.

“He has lost his spiritual power, his mana,” said Hemi bitterly. “Now he is nothing. Once a chief is prisoner he can never again be a chief. He should have killed himself … for there were handcuffs! The one stirring the pot is Te Whero.”

Of the two, Hemi most despised Te Whero, that powerful Waikato chief who had become a Christian and sent little notes to Heke (still unregenerate in the North) page 121 explaining that if he wanted Auckland he must first fight all the Waikato. Heke did want Auckland, but not under those conditions. So, said Hemi scornfully, it was that old fellow, magnificently tattooed and wearing the huia feather of royalty beneath his bell-topper, who really protected everybody. The English only lived because Te Whero allowed it.

Te Whero, talking across the cooking-haangi to Te Rauparaha, was not very sure why he did allow it. Everywhere the Maori was discovering that the pakeha's politics were as muddled as their religion, which Heke once wrote to Queen Victoria about. “We are too confused with your religions,” wrote Heke. “We do not know which way to worship your God now.”

Truly enough they didn't. The early missionaries had been simple men, teaching the plain law of Christ with one hand and carpentry and black-smithing with the other. Then came the Roman Catholics, talking of Mary and Purgatory and Confession; and the High Church Anglicans, under Bishop Selwyn, telling that God could only be approached with genuflections and no end of paraphernalia; and the Baptists, who said you must get right under water before God would look at you; and the Methodists, who said that God did not like his priests to wear long gowns. Altogether, this pakeha God was very capricious and couldn't kill with a curse, as any good tohunga could. As for the law of tapu, the English had nothing to touch it.

“The old gods were best,” said Te Rauparaha, smoking thoughtfully in the shadows. Aue! True … true as dying, agreed Te Whero. And a missionary had once told him that if he disobeyed this contradictory God he would go for ever into outer darkness where the flames of hell would burn him. But when Te Whero asked how it could be dark if there were flames he had no answer. A Maori can always find an answer to anything. Yet it seemed that the pakeha were like sands of the sea for number and every page 122 tide piled them higher on Ao-tea-roa's shores. So peace was best, agreed the two old warriors, and this English tobacco was very good….

“Come,” said Hemi, dragging Tiffany roughly. But she knew that his anger was not for her, and went with him quietly, past the barracks and up to her own gate. Brian met her at the door.

“Well, miss, papa is looking for you,” said Brian, grinning. Tiffany went in, unsuspecting that Sally was also in disgrace for bravely objecting to Brian's tale-telling.

“I asked him why he had left her. Would you have him tell a lie?” cried Peregrine, who was so conscientiously bringing up his family that he cut from the papers any paragraphs unfit for them to see … a habit which gave Brian a deal of trouble because he had to go down to Hew's twice weekly in order to read those paragraphs.

Hemi tramped up the long rustling hill again with his torch burning low. There was fear abroad on the wind to-night, clashing the cabbage-tree blades, the sworded flax, whimpering in the tussock. Here and there in the distances torches moved stealthily. Hemi's anger had gone. He was frightened of the soul of Rehu Pai, frightened of the pakeha. He wanted to pray, but his own gods had no power now, and how could a Maori pray to the English God for release from the Englishman?

“Is there nothing left for the Maori? Is there not anything at all?” cried Hemi, his dark face with the thin English mouth upraised to the dark sky, his dying torch flaring in a red stream of sparks soon blown away.