III

After some ten days, with only John for company, music grew stale, the bush had no more magic, and Roddy rode breakneck over the rough track to discover what had become of Eriti. To Corny, very hot and unbuttoned in his untidy room, appeared Roddy, so white and pitiably frightened by the silence of the house, so young and gallant in the soiled duck trousers and blue jacket of his working days that Corny muttered in his grizzled beard, pouring the boy a tot of rum before he would hear him speak. These youngsters, making such a tragedy of love, which every sane man knew was only the goose-flesh of a moment, thought Corny, speaking to Roddy gently.

But Roddy would have none of his gentleness. He wanted the truth, sir. The truth…. So he got it, and his world went reeling round him, with Corny's red face like page 274 a sun in the middle. He clutched the table-edge, trying to steady his legs, his voice.

“You mean—you can't mean you've taken her away?”

“Now, now, Rod. Let's look at this as man to man.”

“What have you done with her?”

“Now, do sit down, Rod, and—”

“Curse you! Tell me, or by God, I'll make you.”

Oh, these melodramatics of youth, thought Corny, trying to remember his own and be tactful. There had been a blue-eyed Adeline centuries ago in England and he had nearly killed himself…. Young Rod mustn't do that.

“Well, she's gone to be married to a fine young Maori, who'll make her a good husband … which you didn't seem to be meaning to do, young man.”

“I did. Of course I meant to marry her. And I will…. Oh, God, sir,” cried Roddy, suddenly blind with tears, “you didn't think I just meant to harm her, did you? But I knew I was too young and my father … and in the meantime I … we….”

“I know all about those ‘meantimes.’ So did she when she went chasing you,” said Corny grimly. Looking at the boy sprawled in a chair with his head on the table he softened again. He would have dearly loved Peregrine Lovel's brood instead of the piebald lot his sins had given him.

“Come, come, Rod, old fellow, face it like a man. You couldn't have married her, you know. Only the kind of marriage I made, and there was some excuse for me, since I needed a chief's protection and there were damn few white women about in those days. Though I wish I hadn't now,” said Corny frankly. “It ain't fair to breed up half-castes that are neither flesh nor fowl … and the whalers have left plenty of them to get the sins of their fathers visited on 'em.”

Roddy was not listening. He looked up, feeling his page 275 face gone curiously stiff and old. “Tell me where she is, Mr Fleete, and I will go and marry her at once. My father can say what he likes.”

“You're both minors, Rod. No parson would do it without the consent of the fathers. And you won't get that, you know. Eriti's all right … much better off than she could be with you….” These youngsters! Never looking a foot ahead….

“She's not married yet? Not having her lips—” He couldn't say it. But Corny did.

“That is already being done, Rod.” Lovel had been right. The revulsion of disgust and horror on the boy's face showed it, and certainly Maoris had a queer taste to prefer the bloated seamed lips of tattoo to fresh young girlish ones. But of course they never kissed. Only rubbed noses. And it helped to keep women chaste. No Maori buck could possibly plead ignorance if he went poaching. “Here! for heaven's sake don't do that.”

But Roddy had already done it. Exhausted by want of food and sleep, by grief and shock, he had fainted flat on the floor like any young lady whose stays are too tight.

He regained his courage with his senses. Breeding there clear enough, thought Corny, watching him ride off over the hill to Lovel Hall. I hope Lovel will treat him decently, thought Corny, doubting it and drinking the rum Roddy had ignored. Poor young devil. But no other way out for the future Sir Roderick Lovel.

Peregrine, meeting Roddy in the hall, inquired what he had come for, and was told with a violence that made him push the boy into the library and set his back to the closed door.

“You dare use such language to me, sir! Apologize instantly.”

“Go to the devil,” shouted Roddy, inflamed even to his eyes. “I know it's all your doing, you meddling old brute. You've ruined both our lives with—”

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“Dear me,” said Peregrine caustically. “All this commotion about a vulgar liaison with a Maori girl.”

Here Roddy unexpectedly showed himself to be even more Lovel than Tiffany, and Peregrine (though righteously furious and shocked) realized that in some dim way he was rather pleased. Roddy would be a man yet. He held his own quite capably through the following storm which was so considerable that Darien, spending the afternoon with Sally, said that, though she couldn't hear words, it sounded as if Roddy were being rude to his father.

Sally, although soon reduced to weeping, knew that she hoped Roddy was; and then cried the more, for of course it was so wicked to hope it. But when Roddy went rushing through the hall to his room and slammed its door behind him she clung to Darien.

“I—I fear they're both Lovels,” she sobbed.

“Roddy has the better lungs,” said Darien, giggling. Peregrine had been reduced to squeaks. Sally couldn't giggle. This, she felt desolately, had been a quarrel between men. Her little boy had become a man, and so she dared not go kiss and comfort him.

Tiffany dared later, taking Roddy's hot hand as he lay on his bed in the shadows. “Don't touch me, damn you,” he said, jerking it away. Tiffany stood stricken. His hand was burning and below the tangled hair drops showed on his forehead. She went on her knees.

“Oh, darling … what is it? Tell your Tiffy,” she whispered, putting her soft lips to the wet forehead.

But this could not be borne. Eriti's lips … never never would he kiss those pouting duskily-pink lips again. In the dim room he saw them all the time, saw the sharp pipi-shell cutting thin line on line right back to the rosy gums, saw the merciless old tohunga squatting, the blood, the suffering Eriti lying moaning, with her gentle eyes…. His agonized imagination heaped horror upon horror. He hit out like a child.

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“Get away. Get away. Get away!” he cried hoarsely. Never would he let himself be touched by a girl's hands or lips again. Roddy, so ridden by his ideals, so inflamed by Eriti for what she represented rather than for what she was, couldn't in this denied hour see the difference. He was certain only of the craving of his soul and body; certain as one can be at nineteen that life could never smile on him again.

In old Patiti's pa, Eriti, her mouth bloated like a bladder, was being delicately fed through the corner of it with a straw. She was feeling immensely important. The whole pa was serving this half-white grand-daughter of the great chief, come to be married to one of his chieftains —Koperoa. When the pain was very bad she cried a little for Roddy. But he could never have married her and her child would have been nothing. Now Koperoa would formally adopt it and she would be respected all the more because of its white blood … which was so very comforting, thought Eriti, rolling her eyes with gratitude towards Koperoa.

Already the women were making fine mats for Eriti's house, and the young men were putting their nets in the river and drying fish on scaffoldings for the wedding-feast. Later there would be expeditions after pig. A hundred pigs, twenty oxen, all the sheep they could get, and heaps of maize, gourds, and kumeras a hundred feet long, decided Patiti, sending runners round the country with the invitations. War might be near, and the pakeha of little account; but white blood was always a distinction. Besides, no Maori will miss any possible chance of giving a feast although (as often happened) the guests might eat him into penury.

Swamped with pride and honours, Eriti thought more and more of Koperoa, who had danced the whole night through with his warriors after she had given him the ropa, and was so strong he could walk easily with a sack page 278 of wheat under each arm—and so daily she thought less of Roddy.

But in town a startled community was for the moment thinking of no one else. Young Rod Lovel had disappeared. Dragnets in the harbour, hue-and-cry over the hills could not find him. Sir Winston seemed to have the rights of it when he declared that the heir of all the Lovels had passed away like the morning dew.