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Promenade

III

III

So that was war in one of its shapes; and in Sally's arms Tiffany wept for poor Sir John who had never done anyone harm, while in the study Peregrine (having become Sir Peregrine in such tragic haste that only an extra pomposity could cloak his agitation) encountered a Darien ready to knock his stiff legs from under him at any minute. Darien, he felt glumly, was in combative mood; lively as ever if somewhat coarser, her ruddy curls truculent, her straight little nose as sharp after a bargain.

“Those stud rams and young ewes will start a fine flock,” said Darien, stretched at ease in a big leather chair with uncrinolined legs showing shamelessly. “If you'll page 347 lend me one of your boats, Peregrine, I'll take 'em straight down to Canterbury. They can run on your land till I see what better to do.”

Peregrine inserted a finger in his collar, which seemed to be tightening already. Darien, he suggested suavely, would remember that he had advanced money to buy the rams, and though he and Caroline took it very kind of her to have saved them….

“Bah,” said Darien, snapping her fingers. “That for Caroline … and you too. They're mine now, every head of 'em. You'd have had only dead ones if they'd been left to you, and you can't get away from that.”

Peregrine couldn't. All Darien's ideas seemed a liaison between common sense and an acquisitive constitution. He said acidly:

“Do I understand that you wish to pirate my sheep as well as my land?”

“I don't know what you understand. Of course anyone so selfish as you will want to get something out of it. Come now, make your terms and I'll make mine,” said Darien generously.

Peregrine walked about nervously. To take him on the hop like this, with poor old John … but that would be what she was aiming at. With poverty on his doorstep and worse ahead, he would never be able to improve his Canterbury flocks, and to get those carefully-culled ewes and rams down there would be a beginning. He might arrange with the manager…. Pulling his side-whiskers, he said that possibly he might consider it since his interest in the rams….

“Oh, come through the horses,” said Darien, sitting up. “You haven't any interest. Don't flatter yourself. Look here. You know Andrew says your manager's a fool and your wool-production third-class. Make me manager and I'll give you a share in my next lambing. Of course I'll need a good salary, and money for fencing, for I won't have my stud rams mixing with your runts.”

page 348

“H'm,” said Peregrine cautiously. Darien's notion of shares was likely to prove troublesome, and a female manager outraged all accepted canons. But such a passionate and able lover of animal perfection would never keep her hands off his flocks. She'd improve them in spite of herself, and when the war was over he would send Jerry down to turn her out. Jerry had John's eye for a sheep and none of his softness.

For an hour they wrangled over details, and Darien discovered that Peregrine was not soft old John. He had everything in writing before they emerged at last with appropriate expressions; Peregrine trying to hide his content since John was yet unburied, and Darien going disconsolately to the women.

“I never met anyone so selfish in my life. I'd poison him if he was mine, Sally. Well, one comfort is he'll have to look after Caroline and her bunch now. They'll never make anything out of the farm,” said Darien, getting into an old blue frock of Tiffany's and thinking how nice she looked. If it wasn't for the sheep one might be a lady again for a little while…. “I shall want you too, Tiffy,” she said.

“Oh. Will you really?” Tiffany brightened. All mamma's wanting of her would make no impression on papa, and there seemed so little ahead but suicide.

“Can't do without you,” said Darien. Tiffy could look after the house. She was a good cook—would need no wages. I wonder if Peregrine would pay for her board, she thought, and sighed. It wasn't very likely.

Peregrine, trying to withdraw the old Neptune from the general confiscation of everything in order to transport John's livestock, found it even more difficult than he had feared, since the military (whose only notion appeared to be destruction) took no interest in reconstruction at all. But at last it was done, with sheep-pens all over the deck and Captain Tolley turned out of his tiny cabin for the page 349 ladies, and Tiffany breaking down into farewell tears in Sally's arms.

“Oh, darling, if only you could come too….”

But Sally's duty was with papa.

Peregrine saw Darien and Tiffany go with misgivings, but it couldn't be helped now, and Caroline would not see them go at all. To be fleeced like this with poor dear Sir John barely in his grave (what there was of him, and she would put up as fine a tombstone as though there were the usual quantity) was quite too much.

“Well,” she said to Peregrine, later coming reluctantly on some necessary business, “since you've taken all I had I'd like to know what you mean to do for me in return. Though with only Heaven to protect us I really can't see how we'll get along,” sobbed Caroline, so rich in crape and widow's weepers that Peregrine wondered who was going to pay for all that.

Tiffany stood in the stern watching Auckland and old shaggy Rangitoto pass. So much gone now, and never would she sing “Red plumes of the kaka” again. A new and terrible meaning to that childhood song now….

“You can stop calling me ‘Aunt,’ Tiffy,” said Darien, bustling up. “Just say ‘Darien,’ that's quicker, and we shall always be in a hurry in Canterbury.”