II

Gore Browne assuredly did not. In the face of all opposition he was steadily preparing for his Waikato war, asserting that he intended to make a clean sweep of all kings, chiefs and other Maori trouble-makers. But they, cried desperate gentlemen in Parliament and at the page 318 Institute, were nothing to the trouble-making of Gore Browne.

“‘Howl, ye inhabitants of the isles, for the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood,’” declared Sir Winston, abandoning secular quotation for the Bible as being more suitable for these times of wrath.

“Why don't your wretched Parliament stop him? Damme, what d'you think we have you for?” demanded Major Henry, turning apostate at last to Lovels. So Peregrine reminded him that Parliament had made all possible representations to England for the abolishment of Gore Browne before he got everyone else abolished by Maoris, and that they were living in daily hopes of another governor.

“He'll only be worse. They always are,” said Major Henry.

Difficult days for Peregrine, trying to walk the tightrope of expediency and fearing the collapse of everything, including Lovels. Difficult days for Tiffany, secluded in her room and writing long letters to Dick, who never sent any answers.

“I am taking counsel of the Buddhists, who believe in transmigration,” she wrote. “What shall you and I come back as, my swashbuckler? Shall we be butterflies, and dance all day in the sun and sleep all night in the heart of a red poppy? But I think I would rather be myself again so long as you were you. What better could I want? I sew sheets for mamma and pretend that they are my trousseau, and so I am very happy….”

I fear that is a lie, she thought, slipping on her ring for comfort. Two lines, even one, from Dick would help so much.

Regiments drifted and sifted, but Dick Sackville's, it appeared, was not one of them. With the country preparing once more to topple over the edge of ruin, ladies gallantly became gayer than ever, speeding the parting and coming guests with no end of balls, routs, and croquet- page 319 parties … the last being specially designed by Providence for the purpose of flirtations.

Roddy returned, assuring an anxious Peregrine that Brian would be sure to turn up some time, and tackling Hew with indignation. “She don't want you, man. Be decent and marry another girl. Swarms of 'em about,” said Roddy, who, being already Don Rodrigo and certain to be Sir Roderick some day, was much enjoying the swarms. But what with the hope of Tiffany and Canterbury, Hew couldn't be decent; so Roddy talked to Peregrine as man to man (which was sufficiently impertinent and disconcerting) asking how Hew could be expected to press his suit with Tiffany if he never saw her?

“That floored our anxious parent, my love,” said Roddy, who certainly had learned a thing or two at the gold-fields. “You are to come out now, and if you're wise you'll string Hew a bit till Sackville comes back to settle him.”

Tiffany sat on the bed, looking pale and serious. Stringing unwanted lovers was, Roddy feared, not her line. Too honest for this world, he thought, knowing that by the law of nature woman must spend her life in little trickeries and genteel evasions … and man too, egad, unless he is stout enough to go his own way.

“I think war may go on for ever,” said Tiffany. She sang softly:

O, were I Queen of France, or still better, Pope of Rome,
I would have no fighting men abroad, no weeping maids at home.
All the world should be at peace, or if men must show their might,
Then let those who make the quarrels be the only ones to fight.

“They're the only ones who never do,” said Roddy, kissing her. Lord, this love! So destructive to a sense of humour while it lasted! How tragic he had found life until he ceased to love Eriti—if he ever had loved her. page 320 Perhaps it was the ghost of some long-dead Bible maid he had loved, thought Roddy, going off to flirt with Emily (who was quite handsome in the rustic daisy manner) so that she presently fell head over heels and was so constantly drowned in sentimental dew of her own making that Sophia couldn't abide her.

“I hope I'd have more pride than to cry for him. He flirts with everyone,” said Sophia, busy on a book-mark calculated to make Roddy consider another flirtation. Caroline did all she could. Since Roddy liked music, she almost nightly brought Emily to Lovel Hall, setting her down to “The Harmonious Blacksmith,” with variations which, in Emily's hands, were so much more varied than they were ever meant to be, while gentlemen lay in long chairs on the veranda with their meerschaums and cheroots and glasses of grog trying to bear it. Rod Lovel's music and songs, when no women were by, were of a somewhat different quality from any evoked by unwaked girls.

Now Caroline was crying to Roddy coming with his flute: “Emily will play your accompaniments, Emily, my love!”

Emily, thought Roddy, was very well for kisses, being so plump and soft and warm. But not among his music, he felt, proceeding to make it so divinely that Tiffany went off under the orange-trees, unable to endure it in the light.

Leaning against the wall among the crushed scents of jasmine and verbena, she never knew what he played, except that it stirred her to joy and agony. His own wilful soul, perhaps, loving beauty and licence, hating law; the spirit of this new old land, with its sunken mysteries of strife and loveliness and despair; the march of the crowding years; the whispers of lovers, the laughter of happy children in golden fields of corn….

“Thank you. That was very nice. I always think music is so nice, but needing piano-accompaniment,” said page 321 Caroline, crocheting very fast at a green-and-purple mat for the immigrants. “What's the name of the piece, Roddy?”

“I don't know. Some wild fellow made it,” answered Roddy, knowing himself for the wild fellow and watching Hew going off after Tiffany. Heaven send she had sense enough to handle him, though one doubted it. Tiffy seemed to imagine there was only one man in the world. Hew, dark, stocky, and so lamentably in earnest, would come later with his miseries.

“I've loved her so long. I swear I'll never give up until she's married to someone else….”

“Why give up then? She's more likely to want a change.”

“You make a jest of everything, confound you,” cried Hew in a temper. “I believe she just don't know her own mind. If Mr Lovel would put up the banns she'd come round all right. Girls never know what they want.”

Hew (thought Roddy, rather concerned) wasn't behaving like a gentleman; and since Tiffy could show no basis for her asserted affection in the way of an attendant cavalier or even a letter to be intercepted by papa, there really might be danger. So he rode out to ask Darien, who was rather curt about it. Thanks to Nick Flower making such an idiot of himself, she had had to buy Lincoln ewes elsewhere; so she had got nothing out of the trip, and it was simply imbecile of Tiffy to let herself be pestered.

“Tell her to announce her marriage and wear her ring,” said Darien, dragging that dreadful old black hat over her curls and rolling her skirts up on red flannel petticoats. “I can't stay, Rod. I'm busy lambing.”

What the devil was wrong with women that they always ran to death the thing that interested them at the moment, wondered Roddy, riding home to find that another woman was apparently running herself to death page 322 with himself as the interesting thing. It was Emily, said Tiffany, her beautiful brown eyes so grave with reproach to Roddy. She had given confidences….

“She would,” said Roddy, shrugging. Poor Tiffy, with her sense of humour gone so shockingly astray, would never understand philanderings. “It's the kind of thing that should be said between gentlemen, ain't it, Tiffy? But since perhaps you consider neither of us a gentleman can it be said as between ladies?”

“She—she tells me you kiss her very often, Roddy.”

“Quite right. I do.” Lord! if all his easy kisses were remembered against him in the end they'd never be through with the Last Judgment.

“But you have not asked for her hand?”

“Oh, my dearest girl!” He began to laugh, lying in the fern-gully, dropping twigs into the stream. There they went, all his kisses, bobbing round the corner out of sight.

“I don't understand,” cried Tiffany, going white. “You wouldn't kiss her unless you loved her, and if—”

Tiffy, felt Roddy, would be the death of him yet. For the first time he felt sorry for Dick Sackville.

“I love so many, Tiffy. All the fair women who ever lived and died for love. They seem to have the monopoly of that, by the way. Men don't do it. I love all the phantoms going by in the night and unveiling their dear faces just for me. And since I can't kiss them I have to make the best of … Emilys.”

“Then you are very cruel,” cried Tiffany, sitting up.

“Yes. I didn't mean to be. Or perhaps I did.” So many silly moths always insisting on flying into candles. “I do sometimes,” said Roddy candidly.

Tiffany was bewildered. Could every man be cruel … except Dick?

“You see, Tiffy”—only he knew she wouldn't see—“physical love that we snatch at so fiercely … of its very nature it has to die. It is the vision … the impossible perfection…. Oh, I can't put it into words; but I don't page 323 think we could go on living without the knowledge that there is something we can never touch and soil … for we do soil most things we get our clutching hands on, Tiffy.”

No, she couldn't see it, this poor dear Tiffy so besotted about Sackville, who'd certainly teach her if he wasn't better than most men, thought Roddy, advancing Darien's opinion that she should declare her marriage. “It's not really fair, Tiffy. I know there are several hankering.”

“But I promised Dick—”

“He didn't foresee conditions. And since it was only to pleasure him, don't you think he'd be better pleased if Hew stopped making love to you?”

“I never thought of that. Yes. He would. I'll do it, Roddy,” cried Tiffany, jumping up in her eagerness to please Dick.

“Lord, how you do rush your fences. Wait your opportunity, my dear,” said Roddy, feeling very wise and imagining Tiffy blurting it out to an irritated papa hungry for his dinner. “You are so very young,” said Roddy.

Talking after dinner, he felt that papa also was very young, expecting sons always to do as they were bid. The Canterbury station, explained Peregrine, was a different proposition now, thanks to Andrew Greer. A manager and a sprinkling of sheep. Roddy could go down with Hew and Tiffany and knock matters into shape. Build a good house. All the sheep-kings must have elegant houses.

“I'm obliged, sir,” said Roddy, not sounding very much so and hoping Tiffy wouldn't break her news at present. “Jerry would be better at that. And I'm going to the Southland gold-fields.”

“You are what, sir?” demanded Peregrine, his bleak nose and eyes coming forward out of the shadows.

“I just told you. That Southland country is almost unknown. Pioneer work. Always something new over the page 324 hill,” said Roddy, feeling already among those snowy ranges, those icy peaks beckoning to unseen horizons. Emily would not be with him there but Burd Helen would, and Mary Hamilton, and a hundred more tender ones to come at the call of his flute in the camp-fire smoke.

“I have done all the pioneering necessary for my family, Roddy.”

“Not mine,” said Roddy, lighting his pipe. “I intend to do my own, sir.”

What hard-working father scheming for an ungrateful family would not have been justified in losing his temper? Great Heavens, how did he come to have such children, wondered Peregrine, embarking on a heated panegyric about the necessity of upholding the glory of the Lovel name.

“Names ain't going to count for much in this country,” explained Roddy, as his sire paused for breath. “I daresay they did very well along with a number of old notions in England, but they're not going to work here. I learned that on the gold-fields. It's a man's self and not his name will always tip the balance here.”

“You cursed iconoclast! You will one day be Sir Roderick Lovel.”

“I shan't ever tell anybody, sir,” promised Roddy genially.

It was perhaps Tiffany's luck that she should bring her news and Sally out to the veranda just now; Sally like a little quaking ghost who had just been frightened by a moral (as indeed she had and expected to be more so in a minute); Tiffany excited and very proud. Roddy tried to stop her, but she had her ring on and that seemed to be spurring her to destruction.

Now we're in for it, thought Roddy, watching poor dear Tiffy flinging her thunderbolt and then standing gamely prepared to receive cavalry.

Peregrine met the thunderbolt like Jove, flinging it back page 325 with a bitter: “His name, madam? His name and at once.”

That, said Tiffany, her husband would tell him when he came. “I ask your pardon for being disobedient, papa, but it was you who made me so.”

“I? I? Have a care what you say, miss.”

Even his whiskers are bristling, thought Sally, despairing. Tiffany said:

“By trying to make me marry Hew when I loved someone else. Your children are human even if you are not, and I wanted to make my own life.”

“Did you indeed? A minor … defying her father. I insist on knowing the name of the scoundrel who tricked you into this. Who dared perform the ceremony? Where did it take place? Show me your marriage-lines at once.”

“Marriage-lines?” asked Tiffany, bewildered.

“Good God! Don't tell me you have none. This is just a pack of lies cooked up to hide your shame, is it? You have been wantoning with some loose barracks fellow, and now you dare—”

“Steady, sir, steady,” said Roddy, putting himself in front of Tiffany, since the old chap was looking really dangerous.

“I suppose my husband has the lines. I will write and ask him to-night, since you seem to be anxious for them,” said Tiffany, magnificently. What was a bit of paper when she had her ring? “And I think you forget that you are speaking to a lady, don't you?”

“Lady!” Peregrine choked. “You … you impudent strumpet!”

For the first and last time Sally forgot her duty to Mr Lovel.

“Please remember that you are in the presence of two married ladies who are not accustomed to such language,” she said, putting her arm round Tiffany.

If a mouse had roared at him Peregrine could not have been more dumbfounded. He collapsed in a chair, star- page 326 ing feebly at these females … these vipers whom he had nourished in his bosom.

“I have spent my life for you,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Slaved and planned … given you everything….”

“Except our souls. You never let us have them,” said Tiffany. “Ask Roddy.”

As a man Roddy felt it time to come to his parent's help.

“It will be all right, sir. Aunt Darien and Mr Flower were at the wedding.”

No sponsoring could have dismayed Peregrine more, if he had been capable of further dismay. He waved Roddy off, saying merely:

“Produce your marriage-lines and send the fellow to me the moment he arrives. Until then I beg you will have the decency to conceal your disgrace.”

“I think Hew should know, sir, since he seems to expect—”

“Oh, tell him. Tell the world. Shout it from the house-tops. You are all in league against me,” cried Peregrine, rushing off to his study and slamming the door, while Sally dissolved into sobs in Roddy's arms.

“Oh … oh, how wicked I have been. To defy papa—”

“You were in good company,” said Roddy, sitting down and pulling her on to his knee. “My poor little mammy, this is the best thing in the world for him. He has bullied us all our lives just as England has bullied New Zealand. Now we are going to stand on our own feet—ain't we, Tiffany?”

“What a magnificent nursery-governess was lost in papa,” said Tiffany, looking almost her own gay self again. Tiffy, thought Roddy approvingly, was always a fighter.

Sally moaned. Could these really be her children? “Oh, my duty!” she sobbed.

page 327

Duty was the one word that had never failed, but it failed now. Nothing to take hold of now, thought Sally, with Roddy rubbing his warm hard cheek against her soft faded one, telling her that since we certainly didn't always obey God it would be sacrilege to obey papa, as that would be putting him above God.

“Oh, Roddy, you do confuse me. You make everything sound so different. I don't think you can be right, dear, can you?” pleaded Sally. She was crushed beyond present repair. Her ingratitude, her wicked ingratitude to Mr Lovel, who had been planning and slaving for her all the time even though one would never have suspected it. “Oh, let us all go and beg dear papa's pardon,” she cried piteously.

With laughter they refused, shaking young bright heads, ready, eager for their own lonely adventurings. So Sally went, knocking softly on the door, creeping in with her face all smudged with tears. “Oh, Mr Lovel, can you ever forgive me?” whispered Sally, stretching out her pleading hands.

Amazed, Peregrine felt in himself a sensation that he dimly perceived to be gratitude. He was not wholly deserted. There was still one who knew her place … and his. He rose.

“A gentleman must make allowance for woman's weakness. I am willing to believe that a moment's agitation carried you away. I have been too lenient with my children and now I must suffer for it. We … we must meet this lamentable occasion as best we can, my dear,” said Peregrine, bowing over Sally's hand. But Tiffany (he decided) should go to Darien. One could not risk Sally getting out of her place again.