IV

God, you were tired when you made this country, said Roddy when first he saw the Plains. But Darien and Tiffany soon cured him of that. So did the jovial young station-owners (everybody was young and jovial here) riding down for the mail at the accommodation-house, riding back over twenty miles or so of tussock, and never failing to call in at Durdans and Bendemeer on their way. Always open doors for passers-by on the Plains, and always room in the men's whares for tired tramps.

At Durdans young men stayed a night and possibly two, hanging over pig-pens and branding-yards, talking sheep and cattle with Andrew Greer. At Bendemeer they sipped of Society as they had not done since leaving England, basking in such delight as comforted (or discomforted) them for barren weeks; talked and squabbled and jested, ate quantities of cake and scones, and sang every song that anyone could remember. Roddy's guitar had been immensely popular until he too followed the new gold-rush over the ranges to Westland where all the world seemed hurrying now.

“Can't keep hut cooks or shepherds,” complained station-owners and cadets, condoling with Darien finding herself in like case. “If the Kaiapoi Maoris turn miner too we'll have to shear our own sheep,” said Toby Bayles, his round face solemn over the consumption of buttermilk scones.

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Darien was on the hearth-rug toasting bread. In a tight tawny jupe and flowing skirt she was also toasting hearts that were eager for beauty and getting little elsewhere “We'll have shearing-bees,” she proposed. “You boys will shear my sheep, and Tiffy and I will pick-up for you all.”

They laughed together, these young things, taking chances for the glory of the game. Chances against the fierce nor'wester roaring out of the gorges for three days on end, leaving stripped trees and roofs, overturned tanks and other ruin in its trail. Chances against the bitter south winds killing young lambs by the hundred, against snow in the ranges and flooded rivers, against loneliness and drink.

But man (who has so few virtues) cannot resist the cosmic virtue of holding on. So roofs were anchored somehow, English trees grew lustily into break-winds, yolk rose in the wool on the rich virgin grasses, and wealth was coming everywhere to the Plains. How many of these men in their rough shabby riding-clothes and un-darned socks could show banking accounts that would make the mouths of northern folk water, thought Darien, wishing she knew which Tiffy would choose in the end.

Even Roddy had told her she must take someone. “Use your common sense, my dear,” Roddy had said, speaking as though everyone had it, though he ought to know better.

Riding next day to Durdans, Tiffany thought how glorious it was to ride alone, to see nothing anywhere but the gleaming sweep of distance, the round pale bodies of feeding sheep, the dark green clumps of cabbage-trees, like Maori warriors in their mats. All the old joy, the old trouble and pain lay behind her now, and there it would stay. She had promised Roddy. Write poetry again, Tiffy, Roddy had said, coaxing with his guitar. But Dick had killed that. Killed too the virginal feeling which had so strangely persisted in her until she came among these lean lonely alert young men looking at her with eager page 375 reverent eyes. Her cheeks coloured with more than the sun, the fresh clean wind. If they knew I couldn't bear it, she thought, having lately arrived at a humbleness which was exasperating Darien greatly.

Yet Skipper was stretching out in a long easy gallop over the springy tussock, and one could use a hundred miles of it as a door-mat any day. Which does give a kind of conquering feeling, thought Tiffany, pulling up beside Argyle going to feed the boundary-dogs. Since nature had provided no fences and men had not yet found time for them, boundary-dogs still served as such on the plains, each prisoned within his stark oasis of kennel and water-trough, each seeing with wild far eyes his fellow-sufferer along the line and barking at him for ever. So timid sheep fed well away from that noise, and though Tiffany pitied the dogs Darien never would. They served the sheep just as she did, and that was honour enough for them.

Tiffany ran a critical eye over the spring-cart with its water-barrel and heap of quartered carcasses. Argyle had the alternative manners of a courtier and a navvy, and his poor brain had long since gone askew with its weight of learning. But one accepted him among the many mysteries that drifted to the Plains, and when he wasn't thinking of his ancestor the duke or trying to remember the number of miles between Saturn and Venus he did very well. He looked round now with his vague restless eyes.

“Do you know if Jove and Jehovah ever met, miss?” he asked.

“Quite likely. They were both energetic,” said Tiffany, always kind to poor Argyle. “I think you'd best hurry a little, Argyle.”

“I wonder which met the other most,” said Argyle, obeying.

At the slip-rails to the Durdans home-paddock Linda's page 376 Janet and Prue were waiting, bursting with the news of the imminent arrival of Caroline and Emily.

“Mamma had the letter yesterday,” cried Prue, looking up with her long lustrous eyes in the sleek dark head, “and she's going round with a wild eye like a ewe refusing suck to her lamb.”

“Oh, Prue,” reproved Janet, always so burdened with modesty and respect to elders.

“She is. She don't want grandma. I heard her tell papa. What's grandma like, Cousin Tiffy?”

Prue must wait and see, said Tiffany, ignoring the elfish child's “I know what that means,” and hitching Skipper to the gate-post as she went in.

Linda had at first received Tiffany with reservations, although remembering that queer things happened in war and that she had almost been run away with by Lieutenant Silk herself. But Tiffy did not seem to be mourning a lost husband … and if he hadn't been a husband shouldn't she be mourning a lost something else? Linda consulted Andy, who advised her to believe none of those tales, little woman. “And don't tattle,” said kind competent Andy, who had quite taken mamma's place of adviser to Linda.

Linda was pink to her eyebrows with dismay at Caroline's coming, and indeed there was cause. Man, ranging so widely, takes little heed of centres. But to woman (who has to begin there and so seldom gets beyond it) the centre is her all. Now two definite centres were about to meet … and when that happens there are cyclones, aren't there? thought Tiffany, saying that we must marry Emily off at once and then Caroline could live with her. Emily must be used to her.

“Nobody could ever be used to mamma,” said Linda. Here she had rooted, encircled herself with seedlings, and now her round alarmed eyes saw mamma pulling them all up. “We have only the one spare room, and I can't ask Andy to build another this year. I don't suppose Darien page 377 …. Run away, children,” cried Linda sharply to inquiring heads at the door.

Tiffany didn't suppose it either. Darien of the big striding boots and bright assertive hair never put herself out for any but animals. She loves them best, thought Tiffany, loyally refusing the secret suggestion that Darien loved the money they brought better still. Yet she promised to speak to Darien, riding away, and later sending three incipient miners to Bendemeer's back-door to fill their tucker-bags. “They looked so young and gentlemanly, and they are so sure they can get through the mountains,” she told Darien over cutlets and hot scones with honey.

“No end of fools in this world,” said Darien, eating with appetite. But she sat with firm white chin on her hand when Tiffany spoke of Caroline. “I think we'll knock this room into the next and give Emily a dance and a chance,” she said.

Also, it would leave them without a spare room for Caroline.

Tiffany went to water her flowers a little later; stocks, cherry-pie and wallflower being so gratefully fragrant after the day's heat. Now he sun was gone, but the warm afterglow lingered for hours down here, gilding the far level distances of tussock, the great blocks of shearing-sheds, cart-sheds, stables, stores, and huts lying peaceful against the gleaming sky. In a land that served the sheep, houses meant so little; but Tiffany loved this queer man-evolved procession of room added to room in a long row, each with its door opening on the low wide veranda, where she had planted jasmine and banksia roses and great cloth-of-gold against the poles. Like Linda, like all women, she felt how necessary a centre is. But Roddy never felt that. Dear Don Rodrigo, so ready to love the girls, so ready to leave them for unseen glamour ahead.

“I cannot stay. I follow wandering fires….” she sang softly, feeling other lines hurrying urgently to link on. page 378 Until the last light dimmed and wekas began to call beyond the enclosure Tiffany stayed in the garden, discovering such a surprising relief in putting her thoughts into words again.