V

All her married life Haini Fleete's heart had secretly cried “Riria …”; and now she went down into the Waikato to see her elder daughters, who were married to lesser chiefs of her father's tribe, and sat by his own fire with the old chief, who was still sacred to his warriors since he had never signed the Treaty and occasionally killed a few of them to show that he didn't hold with new-fangled ways.

Corny cared not a fig what became of his daughters, whom no respectable white man would marry. “But always always he says his sons are pakeha and must fight with the pakeha,” said Haini, crouching by the fire in a mat, looking with her beautiful haunted eyes at the tattooed old chief who was her father.

“And what kind of sons are they, wahine?”

“Some”—Haini lost count of her children now and then—“some are nothing. Rupe and Hoani work on the wharf. Hori has gone to sea on a whaling-ship. Peto has the chest-trouble. For Hemi … I do not know,” she said, feeling uneasily that she knew too well. Hemi, with page 229 his thin English face and hips and the Maori fanaticism in his dark eyes, was being torn by the warring natures in him. Torn by hate and love.

“I think it is time you took Hemi to make him be chief when you are dead,” Haini said slowly, feeling her words traitor to Hemi, who could not leave Tiffany Lovel although Haini had begged him often. They will not let you marry her, my son, she had told him. But Hemi had said: “I shall soon have her under my mat and then what can they do?” Wild foolish Hemi, riding with Tiffany on the hills, bringing her little offerings to the fern-gully. “Take Hemi quickly lest worse befall,” said Haini, staring into the fire.

Back up in Auckland Caroline had already invited the worst. Infuriated by Darien's interferings with young men who might do for Linda, she went to interfering herself with such energy that Peregrine posted straight home from an interview with her to tackle Sally, who was making up the housekeeping accounts on which he questioned her so minutely every Saturday night.

“Starch 3 lbs. at 1/-,” wrote Sally. “Butter 4 lbs. for 3/-…. How much did I pay for Tiffany's stockings … or was that last week?”

Dull things, accounts, with thoughts of what might have been so constantly troubling that once Jermyn had got into the groceries and had to be called Tartaric Acid when Mr Lovel insisted on knowing what she had scratched out so hard. Husbands (thought Sally, looking meekly up at Mr Lovel stalking in) seem so often to train wives up in the way they shouldn't go.

Nothing meek about Mr Lovel glaring down with those close black eyes and saying: “So it is left for other women to look after my daughter, is it, madam? What is all this about Tiffany and that low half-caste, Hemi Fleete?”

“I don't know,” said Sally, very startled at being called madam.

page 230

“'Pon my soul! Is there anything you do know? I look after my sons, but I expect you to look after your daughter.”

The children were always Mr Lovel's when good and Sally's when naughty. So Tiffy must have been naughty … and yet it seemed that she had only been boating with Hemi.

“But … the other boys are at school. Now that Roddy's away she must have an escort….”

“An escort? A Maori boy escort for my daughter? I thank you! Do you realize,” he cried, taking sharp turns through the room, “that his mother is unmarried?”

Whose fault is that? Sally wanted to cry. But one could not talk ethics to Mr Lovel, who had his own. She murmured: “He is her oldest friend….”

“Disgusting,” said Peregrine, whom Caroline had thoroughly alarmed. “Does one make friends of such cattle? Even you must know what young Maori men are like. The morals of the barnyard. Anything might have happened while you sit here mooning. Where is she?”

“I don't know.” Sally was completely rattled. Fleetes and Lovels—friends since they were babies…. “I … I think she went riding.”

“You think? You don't even know how your daughter spends her days? By God,” swore Peregrine, quite forgetting to be genteel, “it is time I took that girl in hand.”

“She would never do anything wrong,” cried Sally, terrified for poor Tiffy, already taken in hand so much.

“Kindly confine your observations to something you understand,” said Mr Lovel, hearing Tiffany unlatch the gate and march toward the veranda.

Sally followed him, trembling, as he went out. What insults would Mr Lovel heap on her proud sensitive woman-child? Oh, please God, she whispered, feeling that she would even tell how Brian swore like a trooper and came home drunk one night if it would take his mind off destroying Tiffany's wide-eyed innocence. But Mr page 231 Lovel was quite capable of attending to them both, with all his foibles crystallized into habits and all his ideas into laws. Jermyn had said that, adding that this was why Mr Lovel had got so far. Short sight carries one a long way, said Jermyn, who seemed to see so far now that he rarely saw Sally.

Tiffany's long heavy habit was bottle-green and her broad hat had a sweeping bronze feather. She came stately up between the hollyhocks like a queen, the light leaving her face as she saw Peregrine. He was actually moved to admiration of this creature which he had produced.

“My dear, you look very well. You are quite the young lady now, and it is time that you should behave as one.”

“What have I done?” asked Tiffany, her mind running over her latest sins—upsetting the milk-jug; slapping Hew when he tried to kiss her (but nobody could have helped that); making a pudding with the candle-fat (but mamma threw it away in time).

“Nothing but what can be remedied, I hope,” said Peregrine with heavy geniality. Egad, her skin was even better than Darien's. “No scandal yet, I fancy.” (Not with those eyes, he thought, priding himself on his perspicacity.)

“Scandal?”

“Oh, Mr Lovel! Be careful,” murmured Sally, hearing that new note in Tiffany's voice. She and Roddy … like race-horses, feeling a word like a blow. Peregrine heard the note too, and stiffened to it.

“Yes, miss, I said scandal. It is scandalous for you to be seen in the company of those low-class Fleetes….”

“But we have known them always,” cried Tiffany, amazed. “On the Beach….”

“This is not the Beach. You never meet Maoris in the houses of our Auckland friends. Surely you understand that they are quite beyond the pale.”

page 232

“I meet them at Bishop Selwyn's.”

“He is a clergyman,” said Peregrine, dismissing the Bishop.

“Do you mean,” said Tiffany, now so hot inside that she felt like ice outside, “that though Maoris are our equals in God's sight they're not our equals in the sight of Englishmen? I've been told that before.”

“Don't you dare speak to me like that,” cried Peregrine, losing his dignity and dropping his eyeglass. “Oh, Tiffy dear!” murmured Sally, between terror and joy at seeing Mr Lovel bearded at last by one of his own family.

“Do you mean that?” demanded Tiffany, feeling as dangerous as she looked.

“It is not for you to ask what I choose to mean.” Peregrine could scarcely believe his ears. “Of all the insufferable—whom have you been riding with just now?”

“Hemi Fleete.”

“By God! And you have the impudence to own it! What did he say to you?”

“Oh, Mr Lovel!” piped up Sally, beginning to cry.

“What did he say to you, Tiffany?”

Hemi, as usual, had talked of love, though not so stupidly as Hew did. But how could one say so to papa glaring with those sharp narrow eyes which never saw the right things? Tiffany felt suddenly very young and frightened of papa, stammering:

“Oh … just things. One don't notice what boys say.”

“Don't you indeed, miss?” said Peregrine, scenting evasion. But before the frank clear hostility of her eyes he positively couldn't say what he had a mind to. After all, she was merely a child and he was a gentleman. He became pompous. “Then, as you do not notice what young men say, it will be no hardship to leave them out of your amusements in future, unless accompanied by a suitable chaperon. You understand? No more running all over page 233 the place in this loose manner. And no more communications whatsoever with Mr Corny Fleete's family … who are no better than niggers.”

“Am I to cut Mr Fleete too, as he is responsible for them?”

Peregrine's mouth fell open in sheer amaze. He forgets that she is a Lovel too, thought Sally, the tears of terror running down her cheeks.

“Of all the …” gasped Peregrine. He made a movement towards the riding-whip she held and thought better of it, conscious with dazed certainty that she might use it first. “Go to your room,” he thundered. “And be thankful that I do not give you a good thrashing for your insolence…. Wait. Have you understood my orders?”

“Yes, papa,” said Tiffany, and uncomfortably he saw a gleam of amusement now, as though she had read his thoughts. “I am not to ride alone with gentlemen, or there may be scandal. I am not to associate with Maoris except in God's society, for they are not fit for anyone else's. I understand.”

She sailed into the house with her long habit sweeping, and if Sally had been less frightened she would have laughed at Mr Lovel's face. Had anyone else in all his life made him look like that? She didn't believe it. He recovered with an effort, but his feelings had pinched his nose quite white.

“Bread and water. And no emergence until I give permission,” he pronounced, thinking that Tiffany would probably stay there for the rest of her life. Not trusting himself to say more, he went off over the hill to the shipyard, where he so handled the Maoris that they all remembered that there was a tangi somewhere and it was their duty to be present.

“We will come back taihoa … when the food is finished,” they promised, dropping their tools among the piles of yellow sawdust and boards and getting into their canoes and paddling away with glad shoutings over the page 234 shining water. Probably he wouldn't see them again for a week. Was ever a gentleman who always tried to do his best so cruelly hampered on every side?

Sally went up and tapped nervously on Tiffany's door. She knew that the proper method for mothers was to bounce in suddenly on daughters in the expectation of finding them doing something they shouldn't. But because Aunt Matilda had so bounced, Sally simply couldn't, remembering how that rough handling of her dreamings had destroyed their bloom. She would respect Tiffany's girlish reticences, keep her hands off Tiffany's dreams … though every mamma of the period would have felt outraged at this plain neglect of duty. Daughters (said ladies, apparently remembering their own youth) must never be trusted.

Yet Tiffany must learn her doom, and what would happen if she climbed out of a window, thought Sally, fearing that Tiffy, for all her stately ways, was really one of the wild Lovels—Lovel wildness, however commendable in gentlemen, as showing a proper spirit, being beyond contemplation in females.

But Tiffy, with her white petticoats and immature arms and neck and those bright eyes, half-rueful, half-triumphant, peering through her curly mop, was so irresistible that Sally's lips began to twitch. And then she was undone, for they were both giggling together before Sally could snatch at the flying skirts of her duty and shake her head.

“No, Tiffy. You were shocking rude to poor papa.” (Never never have I thought of him as poor before, Sally thought, staggering under the surprise.)

“I know,” said Tiffany, dropping down at Sally's knees as she sat on the narrow iron stretcher, looking up with that rather short vivid face which, said Jermyn, was the Roman patrician type. But the soft curve of the red lips, the rare sweet abasements were purely Tiffany. “I'm page 235 sorry you had to witness it, mamma dear. And I think I really shall become Mohammedan now. Papa's religion does make me feel so wicked.”

“Oh, Tiffy. I wish Major Henry—”

“He couldn't stop me. I had to try them all when I got the books; and the Mohammedan notion of a lot of wives is very sensible. They could combine against the husband. Will you please explain to Haini Fleete, mamma?”

“I'll try.” (Both understood that papa's explanations would need explaining.) “I'm so sorry, Tiffy.”

“Perhaps it's better,” said Tiffany with youth's cruelty towards an unwanted lover. “Hemi is always asking me to come under his mat.”

“Tiffy! Oh …” Sally felt the world roaring and going black. Oh, please God, she thought, crying on her one mercy.

“Of course I wouldn't,” said Tiffany, her frank innocence quite undisturbed. “That's a binding marriage and it wouldn't be right. Besides, I don't think Maoris dainty enough, and I hate the smell of the hair-oil they make from berries.”

Sally had pandered to Tiffany's daintiness by putting a petticoat of white-spotted muslin round the bare legs of the dressing-table and bed; and Tiffany always kept everything she touched as fresh and clean as a bird kept its feathers, nightly lugging a tin bath and can of cold water up to her room at a time when daily baths were considered slightly indecent. It was possibly only that daintiness which had saved her…. Sally, so taken in the wind, could only sob, bewailing her own selfishness. Tiffany was puzzled.

“Really it would be a great honour, mamma, though white people don't understand. Haini's family is much grander than ours, and no Maori may speak his grandfather's name, and Hemi has as many Begats as the Bible. The tohungas made him learn them, and sometimes he says them to me for hours. Hemi is a very … a very page 236 heredic person indeed,” explained Tiffany, struggling with the word. “Of course his father isn't anything much,” she added, rather spiteful about drunken Corny, who could go into gentlemen's houses.

“But, Tiffy … they … they were cannibals.”

“Who wouldn't be in a country with no animals, and being such big fellows, and fighting all the time? Papa would be. He's very fond of meat.”

Truly, it seemed, these youthful cubs of the old British lion had not the respect for their elders which a community still endeavouring to be more English than the English might hope for. But obedience to parents was too solid a wall for daughters to tilt at; so Tiffany humbled herself to Peregrine, and in time she was forgiven and rode on the golden bracken of the hills again, with suitable chaperons.

Jermyn and Brian were chaperons on the day when she next saw Hemi in a manuka-track, and Jermyn pulled up to ask why Taranaki had made a Land League when it already had the Treaty. The boy might throw some light on Maori doings because he had powerful connections everywhere, though he didn't look it now, having definitely jettisoned his young dandy ways and returned to bare feet and dirty shirts.

Hemi was unhelpful, scuffing his toes in the red dust, slouching his shoulders. The Treaty, he said, was taipo … the devil. It was a catch to trip the Maori. “Taipo, like all you pakeha do,” said Hemi, very guttural and slashing at his setter with a manuka-switch until it limped off, yelping.

The men rode on, but Tiffany, defying papa's orders, held back angrily. Hemi was being very cruel and disgracefully dirty.

“You needn't hurt animals because you've been hurt yourself,” she cried.

Hemi stepped to her side. “What is a Maori heart to do, Tihane? For it burns. It burns,” he said, looking page 237 with dark hungry eyes that burned too.

But Tiffany was too young for pity and very disgusted with Hemi.

“That's no excuse for looking like a drunken pakeha. Go to your grandfather and learn to be a warrior, can't you!” she cried, galloping on after Jermyn and Brian. A man who had the liberty to do great things and wouldn't….

Riding home through an amber sunset full of bird-song, they passed a new-made grave in the tussock where a Maori girl sat with blanket over her head. Her low mourning blew with the wind through the tussock-spines:

“My companion is dead. He is gone. Never will he return to me….”

And then Tiffany bent her head over the saddle-bow and talked no more.