This surely was the beginning of the end, thought Auckland, becoming monstrous gay; with sailor-men making Loafer's Corner quite dangerous of an evening, and young officers climbing Jacob's Ladder for bets.

Caroline was preparing for another card-party. Although still tiers of crape below the waist, Caroline was alarmingly breaking out into purple bows and gold chains, brooches, and lockets above, and sewing peacock-feathers in her cap. “I feel it our duty to think of others,” she told Sally. “And I'm sure poor dear John wouldn't mind because I always tie a crape bow to each table-leg.”

John was now always “poor dear John” to Caroline; but Sally felt it was not he that was to be pitied, with the war still going on, since what might have been a rout in the Waikato if briskly followed up had resolved itself into another of Cameron's slow marches. And Auckland's Parliament squabbled fiercely with Grey over the confiscation of rich land and his lenient treatment of Maori prisoners.

Governmental ministers and settlers were all for confiscation and hammering the devils to the limit; while Grey, backed up by London's Colonial Office, which hadn't seen the work of years go up in flame, talked at large of leniency, and the army wobbled uncertainly between the two. Tamihana, chased out of the pa of his kingship and reading in the papers what Parliament proposed to do with them all, prepared for a last stand; but the unquenchable Rewi was at it first, entrenching with some three hundred warriors under the very nose of a brigadier at Orakau and quite unconscious of the immortality it was to bring him.

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The three Lovel brothers were with Von Tempsky's Rangers, part of the two thousand pakeha who surrounded Rewi's pa; and Roddy knew well how there would be little water in the pa and probably no food but raw potatoes and vegetable-marrows. Except in long-established pas with the house-proud women to fill the patakas, the Maoris never thought enough about the commissariat. But for days Rewi withstood the battering of rifles and artillery, and then Cameron, who had always so hated killing Maoris, pushed up a sap and invited surrender.

“To the General. Salutations,” replied Rewi politely. “The end of that. This is the word of the Maori. We will fight for ever and ever and ever.”

“Ake, ake, ake … for ever and ever and ever,” shouted his gaunt men above the broken palisades.

“Then let the women and children come out before we kill you all,” invited Cameron. But the spirit of Thermopylae was also among the women. Rewi returned their answer. “The women too will fight ake, ake, ake.”

“Then, for God's sake, let them have it and get it over,” said Cameron, wishing himself anywhere else.

Roddy, flinging hand-grenades, saw them snatched by the women and flung back, saw a tall wild-eyed woman so like Haini Fleete that his mind rushed back into the past and he could scarcely see for tears.

Wild shouting now, a thrusting of men. To the South the Maoris were driving out in a swift fierce wedge through the surprised regiments, spreading into the thick flax-swamp beyond. So it was “Cavalry!” now. “Rangers!”

Can there be a God? thought Roddy, obeying orders, plunging in the swamp to his waist, cutting, lunging at the gaunt weak fellows whose one idea now was to get somewhere and drink in peace. Such a savage hand-to-hand fight in the sucking smelling swamp among the tall stiff flax-bushes and the crackling koradi-sticks. Such a page 363 long fighting in the bush around, until in the coming night the greater number of that little garrison lay starkly awaiting burial, while their dauntless souls went with the little green lizards to Rienga.

“Ake, ake, ake,” said Von Tempsky, weary over the camp-fire. “Has there been anything like it since the days of the old Greeks? What madness makes you kill such men when you may want them to fight for you some day?”

“They're as strong as we are. We have to,” said young Jerry, very wise under a head-bandage.

Brian said: “Ake, ake, ake! that would make a good slogan. I'll take it back to Auckland.” And he did, so that cricketers and footballers shouted it and, fifty years later, Maori regiments, dying for England in the Great War, were still shouting: “Ake, ake, ake!”

With a broken leg Roddy creaked back in a bullockdray to Auckland Hospital. Mamma, so pretty and gentle in one of these new chip hats with dove-colour ribbons tied under her chin, came to read him Tiffany's latest letter. Perhaps Tiffy had found something to hold on to in spite of Sackville, in spite of Nick Flower, whom Roddy would have a reckoning with if ever he could find him.

Tiffany, it seemed, had found nothing to hold on to at first. She had thought some mad old pagan god must have made the Canterbury Plains, because any other would have had more imagination. A monstrous level living thing, sprawling dun-colour against all the horizons like some neolithic animal, breathing so steadily and awfully with the wind running in its tussock hair.

“I couldn't write of it at first, it was so much more frightening than crossing the rivers, though they were bad. But when we had to drive for over sixty miles across that dreadful live body that seemed as though it might turn any minute and destroy us, I felt as though we were adventuring into hell. Darien liked it. She said it was such good feed for the sheep.”

Roddy smiled. This practical Homeric Darien, turning page 364 monsters into sheep-feed. But Tiffy finally had found something to hold on to. There were lovely clumps of cabbage-trees, she wrote, and a tiny hill behind Bendemeer up which she ran every night to watch the sun go to his royal bedding behind the Southern Alps.

“The sun has quite a new array of colours down here,” she went on, “so gaudily grand that each time you can hear him saying: You can't beat that! Then he says good night and winks at me and disappears into his snowy bedclothes, which are everywhere six thousand feet above the Plain. So I come down, well content, to help the female half of the married couple cook supper, and listen to Darien attacking Robertson, whom she made overseer when she sent the manager away.

“‘Ah'm no drunk, ma leddy,’ says Robertson who has been away for a fortnight bringing stores from Christ-church. ‘Stand on one leg then,’ says Darien. But Robertson knows better and goes off to the men's huts, while Darien comes glowing in with bundles of accounts, which she nearly eats instead of the cutlets, she is so busy checking them. So I sew and read the papers and make candles and set bread, and we are both early abed since we rise at dawn.”

If Tiffy isn't happy she hides it well, thought Roddy, remarking that he would go down and see her as soon as his leg was healed, since papa with his prayers and politics was less palatable than ever, and wouldn't his little mammy run away with him too? “I'd enjoy an elopement with you monstrously,” said Roddy, light from the little diamond-panes falling faint on his white face and yellow head.

Another man had urged that with more meaning. But it couldn't be done, and Parliament was removing to Wellington at the beginning of 1865 and Mr Lovel going with it. And he was sending Jerry at once to Canterbury, said Sally, feeling how life was like the chain-stitch sewing-machine, never tying its threads. So many untied page 365 threads hanging round her. Jermyn, who was writing his book all about beloved England and beloving lovers, with smacks and spikes of Mr Disraeli for the gentlemen; Tiffy, who would have to gather up her broken life un-aided; Roddy, always going away; Brian, who had never been near even when she put a compress on his sore throat; Caroline, Sophia, Maria … all untied threads about a Sally so wanting to rush into life's dim perspective and challenge it. But it would go on receding until the end….

II

After a few more engagements the Maoris finally re-treated into the wild ramparts about the Urewera country, where it seemed wise to leave them, since not even missionaries had penetrated there. So Parliament grimly assessed the war bill at several millions, exclusive of quite unassessable damage to progression, and went to Wellington in the hope that conditions would be pleasanter, while for Auckland the bottom fell out of things.

“See the withers of the galled jade wince,” said Sir Winston, marching off with yellow wig over his ear in processions of indignant Aucklanders demanding instant separation. Was it to be imagined that they would bear the rule of that upstart town Wellington? They would drown in their mud-flats first.

“Separation might be excellent if we could also separate from our debts,” remarked the Chronicle. “Otherwise, the notion of allowing Wellington to pay them commends itself to us.”

Peregrine selling his houses, at great loss, for such wealth as there was now flowed southward, looked on Wellington as merely a step to Canterbury. Ship-building was dying fast in competition against Wellington and Dunedin, and he meant Jerry to turn Darien out of Bendemeer soon.

But Peregrine had reckoned without the Angel Gabriel. page 366 Gabriel (who must be more of a joker than one thought) had appeared among the Taranaki Maoris, had chosen a gentle madman named Te Ua for his prophet, and immediately proceeded to extremes. Von Tempsky and his Rangers, Whitmore and other Volunteer leaders went out after Te Ua, and found themselves confronted with the most shocking thing yet.

“We have so embittered the Maoris,” wrote Brian, “that they loathe us and our religion, and are setting their subtle wits to debase both. Being very hearty about it—as in all they do—they have soon twisted Te Ua's simple creed of Pai Marire, which I believe means Goodness and Grace, into the most revolting heathenism to be compassed by savage and thwarted souls.”

Roddy was now gone South, and Peregrine (seeing two sons meeting Goodness and Grace in such form) began to wonder seriously if Providence did love him after all. Jermyn, singing in the drawing-room, was a mocker.

To you, to you all love and faith is due.
Only for you the heav'ns forgat all measure.

So sang Jermyn, looking at Sally. Peregrine went out to meet with fury Major Henry's suggestion that they should all go to Australia.

“I will be a hanger-on in no land, sir,” said Peregrine. Surely Gabriel must soon relent.

But Gabriel had now provided the head of an English officer to be stuck on a pole and danced round until the Maori dancers fell frothing at the mouth and the tohungas leapt with glee among the writhing limbs. Old Te Patiti, born and bred on superstition, seized his sticks and danced too, feeling that now we had really got something to destroy the pakeha at last. Soon all pakeha heads would be on poles, soon we would dance England off the earth, thought Te Patiti, reeling over and staring up at the tohungas with entranced eyes. Haini stood unwieldy but majestic among them. She couldn't be a tohunga, but she page 367 could prophesy and did, letting loose long years of hate and longing, while Hemi stood by with bursting heart.

Hemi had weathered the physical war, but this challenged the spirit. Built with Maori art upon the Bible, salted with all dark fanaticism, with mesmerism, with the most bloody of pagan rites, the new religion shook minds which had been stuffed and bewildered by missionaries with undigested texts—minds which were also tormented by the knowledge that the Maori was a beaten race. We warriors couldn't do it. Perhaps Gabriel can, thought Hemi, feeling the frenzy that is in all Maori blood work in him until with a strange wolfish howl he leapt in among the dancers.

Wild and barbarous ritual began shooting up like the upas-tree, and it was soon discovered that any white head on a pole would do. Gabriel would take charge of them all, marching with his converts round the country, destroying and befouling all they touched. Rangers, Constabulary, Volunteers ploughed through the clogging bush after that mad flaunting trumpet, sometimes hearing far-off in a still night the wild cry: “Hapa! Pai-marire. Hau! Hau!”

Gabriel (consulting daily with Jehovah) promised that the cry would turn any English bullet, and in desperation Hemi managed to believe it unless he awoke in the unearthly hour before the dawn and heard the birds. Divine orchestras, such as Tihane had so loved, pouring from those swelling feathered throats, bringing again that beauty which the Hau Haus were denying to the world. Bellbirds intent on their clear morning chiming, tuis loud and glorious up and down their perfect scales, great wood-pigeons booming low melodious basses, fantasias of a thousand robins and wrens, native thrushes going mad with some inner glory, the high chuckling laughter of parrakeets….

Gabriel, do you really want such noises, wondered page 368 Hemi, hearing the Hau Haus raising their morning orisons against the birds. Von Tempsky heard them too; and that night the Rangers, moving almost as silently as Maoris, lay near the Hau Hau camp, dirty and very hungry, having had nothing but the rum-ration for two days. Brian felt disgustedly of his black stubble, wishing he was shaving in Auckland with warm water. Jerry was fretting over Peregrine's desire that he should proceed at once to Canterbury.

“I think Von might let me go,” he muttered to Brian. “I've had near four years of this.”

“I've had five,” retorted Brian. “And there may be another five.”

“It's cursed unfair,” growled Jerry, looking like Uncle John in a temper. “Taking all our youth—”

But war always did that. “So long as it don't take our lives,” said Brian, shrugging. Was this foul thing to go on for ever and ever? He dragged pencil and paper from his knapsack and began a love-letter to Miss Alice Whitman. “There seems no use in even hoping for this trouble to end,” wrote Brian, “and when I think of you I cannot wait. Can you consent to marry me on my next leave, my own dear Blue-Eyes?” And more to the same effect.

A leave for Brian came sooner than he expected. A brush with the Hau Haus next day in a deep shadowed gully, and no Brian at the camp-fire for that night's roll-call. Hemi, who had fought with madness ending in a forced march, thought himself still mad when he saw a familiar dark disdainful head upon a pole, saw a bunch of gold seals and trinkets with the Lovel crest strung round the neck of a leaping maniac. Then all his madness fell from him, and he turned about and walked straight off for a hundred miles or so to old Tamihana, who had long since made his peace with God and man.

“Take me for your slave,” said gaunt tattered Hemi, kneeling down. “For I am not fit to be a chief.”

page 369

III

In Auckland Sophia was feeling the world very unkind, what with Uncle Peregrine selling the house over their heads, and mamma and Emily going to Canterbury. “Why can't I go too?” demanded Sophia, her tongue nearly hanging out at thought of all the rich station-holders.

Linda, said Caroline, had only sent for Emily, and since she knew very well that no young lady could travel alone, of course she must have expected her mother too. “I always think Providence must have sold the farm for us just when we needed the money,” said Caroline, pulling old gowns of purple satin and orange and plum-colour merinos and baréges out of trunks. Even poor dear John couldn't expect her to go to Sydney in crape, and if she did not get away soon Peregrine might look for repayment of her borrowings—which of course she would be glad to settle, only no one could do the impossible.

“Did Linda ask you, mamma?” said Maria, so ready with awkward questions.

“A mother don't wait for a daughter to ask her. She knows she is always welcome. I think you girls had better go and live with Major Henry,” said Caroline, feeling that he was too old to put up much of a fight.

“Oh, yes. And with Jermyn,” cried Sophia, peeping in the mirror. In a dim light her spots were hardly noticeable, and she would do her hair in the new way with rolls. It may be only because he thinks he is too old that he hasn't spoken, since he has married no one else, she thought, feeling how soon she could better that when living in the house.

But neither age nor anything else kept Jermyn from speaking when an agitated Major Henry put Caroline's proposal before him.

“If you take those two moulting guinea-hens I'll never enter the house again,” said Jermyn.

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“Damn it, boy, you don't suppose I want 'em,” protested the Major, dragging at his grey whiskers. “But I suppose the poor devils must live somewhere.”

Jermyn didn't see why they should. He went up to talk to a tremulous Sally, with cap sliding off her head and boxes half-packed for Wellington. “Sing to me, I am so tired,” said Sally. So Jermyn sang:

Will ye come to the Hielands, Leezie Lindesay,
My luve and my bonny dear to be?
Will ye kilt up your kirtle, Leezie Lindesay,
And awa' to the Hielands wi' me?

And having sung that, he said: “A wise callant, that, Sally, never talking of wedding-rings. Will ye awa' wi' me when Peregrine goes to Wellington? He'll have so much luggage he'll never miss you.”

“He would when he wanted it unpacked,” said Sally, but her voice shook. So many times in days gone by Jermyn had moved her heart with that old song. He rose and came to her.

“I mean it as I have always meant it, my dear. All our lives are being upset through no fault of our own, and yours is so lonely now. Your young ones will never return to the nest, Sally. Come with me to England … to Scotland. And you shall lie in the heather and play with the fairies, and I'll make books out of the running brooks … and you and I will be young again, and so very happy, I think.”

This Sally, who would never really be past the playtime she had never known, was tempted now as she had not been tempted before. Almost piteously she clutched at Eternity…. “We shall have all that, Jermyn.”

“You know I don't believe in Eternity.”

“I do, dear.”

“That don't make one.”

Didn't it? Could beliefs make anything sure? But life was such a meaningless muddle without them. She tried to smile.

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“My Eternity is so strong it will get you there in spite of yourself. And Mr Lovel really does seem to need me now.”

“Merely to promenade with. Let him take Sophia.”

Sally began to laugh, suddenly laid her still bright head upon his arm. “Please, please don't make it harder,” she begged. Virtuous promenade with Mr Lovel was surely the very hardest exercise ever required of a woman….

Of the hegira of Caroline and Emily to Sydney and then in another small steamer back to New Zealand's South Island Peregrine heard only that it had cost very much more than was expected, and would he please buy Sophia some wool for framing her texts.

There were also numberless sheets of thin paper for Sally, who would be so eager to hear of Tiffany and Darien. Caroline, who considered herself drama and so often turned out to be comedy, had not approved of Sydney. “No one seemed to realize who I was, and very few returned my bows. A vulgar place. But they have hansom cabs, which Auckland hasn't.”

Sally struggled on through Caroline's gaudy Italian handwriting, searching for news of Tiffy and Darien. “Even the ladies here talk of horses and race-meetings which I consider most ungenteel and said so. I bought at the Monster Clothing Hall a black lace mantle to go with my violet velvet, and Emily paid three-and-six for a pink scarf which was very extravagant. We travelled across the Plains by Cobb's Royal Mail Coach with six horses but it had no springs and made me feel so unwell that I almost fainted a dozen times and I must say the other passengers were quite disagreeable though I had to lean on them. The Plains are shocking empty. Emily saw in the distance what she thought were cattle but I consider to be lions since none but wild creatures who knew no better would live here, though Linda does and she and her children are very well behaved, I must say, and Andrew page 372 should be thankful I took such pains with her. We came to a big river….”

Caroline's description of the big river occupied two pages, describing her anguish when the horses got into a quicksand, and everyone was nearly tipped out on shinglespits and drowned in the swift streams, and had to avoid the ford because of great trees brought down by the last flood.

“Sodom and Golgotha for miles, and I fainted dead away as any lady would. But Emily cried all the time so we got through, though how we lived I really cannot say. So the coach left us at what they call an accommodation-house but I couldn't find any accommodation and a boy was sent on a horse to tell Andrew we had arrived. And thank goodness for that.

“Yet we were far from arriving since we had seven more miles to drive in a strange conveyance called a buggy and not intended for crinolines and Andrew so fat I didn't know him, and Linda fat too when we got there. I said at once: You must give up cream again, Linda, as an example to Emily though I haven't seen any rich station-holders yet. But we have only been here two days and I am still so sore I must conclude, and if it hadn't been for the devotion of a mother which can even endure my sufferings I would never have come….”

Not one word of Darien nor Tiffy. Sally began to cry softly, then discovered a sheet from Emily that promised better. Emily (a natural gusher) was full of rapturous italics. “The darling children. You'd never expect Linda's to be so handsome. Andrew so broad and jovial. Quite the vieux rose,” wrote Emily, feeling that French was always so telling. “Dear mamma almost lived on her drops, since her nerves gave out daily and her screams made us all shudder, though I held the vinaigrette to her nose the whole way over the big river which was very difficult to do. There was a vastly handsome gentleman in the coach, but he was so shy and didn't like to be looked at. Darien page 373 says she and Tiffany have taken all the beaux on the Plains, but they'll spare me one. She looks vastly healthy and so does Tiffy though there is nothing but tussock anywhere. Linda's house is quite a la morte though starting with four rooms but now many attachments and the nor'west wind blew some away. Darien says it blows the dogs off the chains and paint off drays, and may blow me into some station-owner's house. So I say, let the wind blow.”

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.

V

Peregrine (whose eyes seemed to have grown closer together with seeing his sons trying to catch Gabriel) took Brian's death with few words, but he went straight to military headquarters and demanded Jerry's release. “My sons have done their share,” he said, hinting firmly at his own long services to the country, which were courteously acknowledged with the reservation that nothing could be done in a hurry.

This at least was true, since Cameron (heartily sick of what he called “merely a land-grabbing racket”) so confined his men to the beaches that the Maoris called him The Lame Sea-Gull and the Chronicle lightly referred to that king of France who led his army up the hill and led it down again. Paper quarrels between Cameron and Grey grew so dangerous that trembling clerks were forced to write requests that “this correspondence be couched in more becoming language.” Then Grey suddenly flung dilly-dallying to the winds, and went out and won a victory for himself with the colonial troops.

All that England had said against New Zealand was nothing to what it said at this. Already it had been flouted by the colonial Parliament's bill for a self-reliant policy, and now its army was ignored. So England formed regulations against the interference of colonial governors in future; but Grey had the country behind him now. Too many cooks in our kitchen and all spoiling the broth—we will get rid of the Imperials and do our own cooking, said gentlemen, buttoning up their coats and wondering where to begin.

England began, slowly and with great dignity with- page 379 drawing her regiments. Then wild squalls of fear blew up and down the country. “The unjustifiable risk,” cried the southern papers. “We are rushing headlong to ruin,” cried settlers, who had not rushed anywhere else for years. “‘Avoid the man who is hasty in his speech, for there is more hope for a fool than for him,’” declaimed Sir Winston at the Institute … which had lost half its interest since Sir Peregrine Lovel was no longer there to put them all to rights.

Down in the Parliament at Wellington Peregrine was making speeches, and Sally sat with Lucilla in the Ladies' Gallery to hear. As he had never been young (thought Sally) it seemed that he would never be old. Even this crushing blow of Brian's death had not broken or even bent him. With a little added portliness for dignity, assisted by his eyeglass, his white carnation, and his undoubted elegance, he made his points with the cold precision that Sally had always feared. Never yet have I really been able to feel that he is my husband. Oh, how can I be so wicked? What will become of me, thought Sally, looking so piteous and pretty under a little blue chip-hat that Lucilla put a hot arm round her.

“Don't be alarmed. He'll get through it all right,” said Lucilla, who would never forgive him for selling the house and letting mamma and the girls loose upon the world. Probably she'd have to take some of them presently, since her Mr Piper had a great respect for anyone connected with titles.

Peregrine had no doubt about getting through, although dimly conscious that being Sir Peregrine helped. He began at once about the necessity for New Zealand to fight its own battles.

“Gentlemen, as England has refused financial help in the future, we can no longer support twelve thousand of the Imperial Army at forty pounds per head per annum, in addition to all our own volunteers, militia, and constabulary. The country is millions of pounds in debt. page 380 Progress, enterprise of every kind is being not merely crippled but murdered. Under dual control we have for years been hampered by the fact that our colonial Parliament makes the laws and the Imperial Army is at liberty to ignore them.

“The English soldier,” went on Peregrine, who never forgot that he had been one himself, “is the finest in the world. But he also is hampered by the instructions of the English Parliament, while in methods, tradition, and physique he cannot possibly be so suitable as our young tough colonials for the very difficult guerilla warfare which seems unhappily to be our lot. This step, which must penalize our young men still further, has not been arrived at without grave consideration. But we who are responsible are assured that the time has come when New Zealand must stand upon her own feet….”

Even if I lose Jerry too there is no other way to save the country, thought Peregrine, sinking the father in the patriot for a whole hour yet, and was so exhausted at the end of it that he accepted Lucilla's kisses and congratulations with apathy. They'll never let Jerry go when this gets into the papers, he felt, driving home silently with Sally. To sow himself and his sons that others might reap … is this what it means to be a pioneer?

“I believe Parliament has the whole North behind it now,” said Jermyn, coming up to Peregrine's rented house in Wellington. “But these papers make me dubious about the South.”

The South, busy at lambing, shearing, rounding up its mobs of cattle in the ranges, was dubious about itself. It wanted neither conscription nor war-debts but was likely to get both.

“'Pon honour, y'know, it seems that New Zealand has cut her own throat,” said an English cadet, calling in at Durdans and finding it surprisingly full of Lovels. “Not exactly complimentary to the Imperials, neither. But let New Zealand cut her own throat if—”

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Andrew (who had gone colonial with the best of them since he now had a share in Durdans) ceased playing with little Deborah to retort:

“Apparently it was that or letting the Maoris do it, sir.” These young scions of good English families apprenticing themselves on the stations in order to learn farming—what did they know about anything? Never would he have one on Durdans.

“Oh, la! What we have suffered from the Maoris,” cried Caroline, getting out a black-edged handkerchief and beginning to sob. “When I think of my poor dear Sir John—”

“There, there, mamma darling. He can't be killed again, though Sophy and Maria may be,” said Emily, running with the smelling-bottle, kneeling in a flutter of white frills by Caroline. “You see, sir, the Maoris killed dear papa,” she explained, looking up, since that was her most effective attitude, though one didn't often get the chance. Emily (to the dismay of her family) promised to be quite as voluptuous as Caroline, and had no more sense, thought Andrew, who was finding it rather difficult to be jovial just now.

“She don't remember him often, Mr Morley,” said Linda placidly. “Only when she finds a mourning handkerchief in her drawer. You'd better burn them all, Emily.”

Having beaten mamma in a couple of stand-up fights, easy-going Linda was beginning to take a high hand. It was so wonderful to discover that mamma was but human after all.

“'Pon honour … so sorry to have upset the lady,” apologized young Morley, riding on to Bendemeer, where the ladies were never upset. An awful-looking female, all gimp and bugles, and the other … making eyes … “Who the dickens are they?” he inquired, sitting down comfortably with Tiffany and Darien.

Tiffany, reading the Northern papers, left explanations page 382 to Darien, who suddenly remembered that she had vowed to marry Emily off, also that Tom Morley always repeated everything he was told.

“Lady Lovel is going back presently to her married daughter in Wellington,” she said, inventing as fast as she could. “I hope she'll leave Emily here, for the poor child can't call her soul her own. The finest of girls, and so damned unselfish she lets that ogre of a mother eat her up.”

“By Jove,” said young Morley, much impressed. Perhaps those dark eyes had been appealing for help. But he couldn't offer it. No cadet with his term to serve could. Darien followed up:

“We're giving the dear girl a dance soon. Twentyfifth. I never write letters, so you must tell all the men we know that we'll expect them, Tom.”

“Delighted. Honoured. By Jove, that is splendid of you. Except twice at the Christchurch race-time I haven't danced since I left Home. We'll all be here, you may be sure. I … I suppose you wouldn't give me the first dance, Lady Calthorpe?”

“You suppose quite right, my lad. Tell your boss I'm keeping it for him … or somebody else. Oh,” cried Darien, seized with another notion that might help Emily, “I hope old Lady Lovel won't die first. Such a weak heart she may go off pop any moment.”

“By Jove,” said Morley again, and Darien let that sink in. Young Tom had few ideas, but what were given him he held. “If you only did as much as I do we'd have Emily married in a month,” she told Tiffany when Morley was gone.

“Yes,” said Tiffany, her mind still with the northern papers in what seemed to be another country. Still the North agonized, she read, in the struggle that had killed Brian, that had taken Hew's right arm, that was taking so much else. Philosophy don't help much, thought Tif- page 383 fany, though thankful that General Chute, who had replaced Cameron, was proving how the Imperials, when led by determination, could go into the bush and do as much hard hitting as Von Tempsky. And there was so much help now from loyal Maoris, who were becoming majors and captains under the pakeha.

At any rate Sally wrote hopefully to Roddy that Jerry might be home soon now, and she was growing used to Wellington with its houses all hung like wasp-nests on its steep hills, but everyone was very sorry that Sir George Grey had been recalled by England…. “And I am sending you two more vests of red flannel, my darling, which I hope will reach you some day. You seem so very far away,” wrote Sally, feeling how everybody was far away, except Mr Lovel, who was always so very near.

Matters, felt Peregrine, would be much complicated by the departure of Grey who, whatever his faults, had now become an institution and, having proved himself soldier as well as ruler, was deserving of all respect. England would never forgive his behaviour to the Imperials, and she had treated him badly, cried the papers now, combining to send him off in a blaze of glory, forgetting for the moment how they had formerly hated him.

There was, it seemed, so much that it would be well to forget everywhere. Jermyn, coming down from Auckland, told of such poverty there that hard-pressed fathers of families were burning their houses to get the insurance-money, and immigrants, still hopefully arriving, went North to hard labour on the kauri gum-fields—since America was demanding gum for something or other—or so crowded the boats going round to Westland and down to Thames that there was really not standing room.

“Have to make a living somehow, poor devils; but we English are so improvident,” said Jermyn, telling how Chinese were scavenging on the worked-over Dunedin gold-fields, making good livings where the white man had starved. “Westland seems the only place now, though page 384 I shan't go there. I shall write another book, since my last had some success,” he said.

Jermyn had lost his hungry look now, thought Sally rather wistfully. Always compensations for men and so few for women. Even Mr Lovel (it was very difficult to call him Sir Peregrine) had found so many that she couldn't keep track of them: Parliament, the Wellington Harbour Board, the importing of quantities of English birds—sparrows, larks, thrushes, what not—to replace the clear native songsters.

Jermyn laid his hand over Sally's lying quiet in her lap.

“Still adamant, my Sally? There is yet time for Scotland and the heather.”

“Oh, Jermyn!” The flood-gates suddenly burst in Sally. “I wish I could. Oh, how I wish I could. I am so lonely….”

Jermyn put his arms round her. Passion, he felt, had left him. That mad sweet riot of the senses had passed to a younger generation now, and heaven send they made better use of it. “At lease we could grow old together,” he said.

But Sally couldn't even do that, so unaccountable are women. So he dried her eyes for her, telling her how Sophia darned Major Henry's socks with variegated wools and how Maria fed him on mush until he came to Jermyn pleading for a night on the tiles again. “If I don't get blind drunk I shall be rude to those women, poor devils,” said the Major.

So he and the Major had had a glorious time, though the girls kept the Major in bed for two days after, and Auckland wasn't what it was; with everyone still mad on the desire for separation, and the papers so scurrilous about Wellington and Parliament that the Maoris (having long since replaced the missionary Bible with newspapers) respected nobody, not even themselves, and got page 385 drunker even than the pakeha—which was very unpleasant and quite dangerous.

“I don't feel we have governed this country at all well,” complained Jermyn to Peregrine coming in.

But Peregrine, who had the undying quality of absolute belief in himself, wouldn't agree. Grey, he said, standing in his old stiff attitude before the fireplace, was the last of the really executive governors. Bowen would be little more than a pleasant figurehead, and with all power passing into the hands of the Parliament matters would soon be put straight now. “It was merely a free hand that we needed,” said Peregrine, looking like a premier already, with statues and busts preparing for him everywhere and never any for Sally.

VI

Westland, beyond the Southern Alps, was too drunken with gold to trouble about parliaments. Like a woman's bright scarf it lay between rough seas and bush-hills, with the Alps peering down on considerably more life than they had seen since the northern chiefs came down several hundred years ago to kill all the gentle Maoris living there because they would not tell where the sacred store of greenstone was hid. Perhaps they didn't know. Perhaps the mountains didn't. It was so long ago that one forgot.

The chiefs had gone back empty-handed, and the quick bush had covered the dead bones; so that the mountains nodded their white heads together, saying: We have refused man; he knows our power now. Yet later had come this rabble with white faces, tearing the fern-clothed hill-flanks to ribbons, grubbing deep holes in search of the greenstone … which was yellow when they got it but they didn't know the difference. A displeasing rabble, scaring all the sweet shy birds with their scarlet camp- page 386 fires, their great blotches of pale tents, their lanterns, stuck on poles, their endless noise.

We'll see what we can do this time, said the mountains, pouring down avalanches, snow, floods, anything they could think of on these intruders. But the intruders throve on that food, coming endlessly over the glaciers, the swollen rivers, the desolate shingle valleys, the granite heights; round the coast in little pitching steamers; down the long deep bush ways from Collingwood.

Then Cobb's coach came galloping in over the new road through Arthur's Pass, bringing gold commissioners, bank managers, and other important gentlemen from Christchurch, seventy miles off across the Plains. The coach, with its high red wheels spinning, its six snorting horses handled by Ned Devine, that famous whip of all time, floored the mountains. I suppose that's what they call civilization down there, said the mountains, veiling their tall heads in clouds and declining to look at it.

Roddy Lovel, the Graham boys (big bearded men now) from Kororareka, half the youth of New Zealand looked at it with gusto; looked with superiority on these thousands of aliens bringing their strange tongues with them, their strange new methods of despatch.

Although not making a fortune Roddy had more than a little in the bank. So on the whole he was very content with the world, lounging in the crowd one evening to see Cobb's coach come roaring in through a misty rain, its gay red wheels and body spattered with mud. Ned Devine had a new gold commissioner aboard to-night, so the boy blew the horn lustily and the horses shook the foam from shining bits as Ned swung them gloriously up to the Empire, where all the quality lodged. The great man descended heavily in his caped coat, the peak of his cloth cap over his eyes; and between the flaring lanterns the landlord hurried out, very obsequious, since gold commissioners make a deal of trouble if they don't like you.

page 387

Roddy, intent on making trouble and being disliked, followed Mr Nick Flower in over the red carpet, stood before him.

“May I have a word with you presently, Mr Flower? My name is Lovel.”

Nick Flower looked with his half-shut blue eyes in a stare. He never forgot faces, and Roddy had the native grace of the aristocratic Lovels … of whom himself was not one. Despite his working-clothes this fellow apparently remembered that he was Sir Peregrine's heir, with a clean neckerchief tied in a fancy knot, clean hands preparing for the heirloom ring. Finely built, too. Probably as strong as Flower. Flower said suavely:

“Glad to meet you again, Rod. Have a drink?”

“Thanks,” said Roddy, flushing and thinking of his dear Tiffy, so betrayed by this man among the old traditions. “I will wait until you are at liberty. I don't drink with my enemies, Mr Flower.”