To Sally, whose often bewildered blue eyes so generally had to see life through the eyes of others, this Wellington life in the golden 'seventies was difficult to compass. Everybody seemed rich except herself—who couldn't even send pretty clothes to Tiffany's babies. Everywhere she saw her friends ceasing to cut down their husband's trousers for the boys and ordering fine broadcloth by the dozen yards; and candles were simply rampant on dinner-tables, and the new Government House on Lambton Quay was lit up all over almost every night. Yet the more money Mr Lovel had (and Jermyn said he was very rich) the less he liked to part with it. How wonderful it would be, thought Sally, walking past the shops with Mr Lovel, to go in and buy hundreds of yards of grenadine and tarletan and lovely useless things for Tiffy, and Noah's Arks and leaden soldiers and … oh, everything else for Tiffy's little boys.

Jermyn was rich too. Roddy (who had gone away, as far as America this time) said Jermyn's rooms at the Queen's Hotel were palatial and he must be making a pile out of his scribblings. It always hurt Sally when Roddy talked of Jermyn's “scribblings,” although she didn't like them herself so well as she used to do. I suppose I'm growing old, thought Sally, who had never looked for faults in any but herself.

Faults were assuredly the last thing a rising man should look for in himself, thought Jermyn, taking his mail at the crowded post-office, when the English boat came in and returning to his “palatial rooms” to be very grave over it for a long time. So many bouquets the mail page 423 brought him (and they were increasingly pleasant). And something else it brought, about which he must consult Sally. But she can't expect me to do otherwise, he thought, and then felt a twinge of shame. All her life Sally had never expected enough … and so that was what she had got, for the world goes like that. And since the world is the only thing that matters one felt sorry for Sally.

He moved about the sitting-room, where he kept up a kind of celibate elegance in spite of Victorian land-ladies; stood critically before the long narrow mirror in its gilded frame. At fifty-odd he didn't look within ten years of it. No grey yet in the loose fair waves of hair; few wrinkles round the brown eyes, which had not lost much of their light; a figure slim and graceful still (only he could be aware of a faint stiffness); an interesting face, with the mouth barely sagged at all; an interesting personality….

Quite unknowing that he was trying to see himself in the eyes of the presenters of all the bouquets, Jermyn took his malacca cane and grey doeskin gloves, cocked his tall hat at its usual angle and went out to call on Sally. I hope to the Lord she won't cry, he thought. Oh, the terrible strength of woman's weakness. Yet, but for her, he might have married long ago; been tied neck and foot, instead of being free to take this great chance now offered to him. After all, he had something for which to thank Sally, poor wretch, he thought, Mr Pepys's tag coming easily to his mind.

Wellington (who never forgot that her motto was “Suprema a situ”) was looking very conscious of supremacy and prosperity, with the little waves sparkling all across her great harbour set like a cup at the bottom of bush-hung hills. There were wreaths of white manuka, flashes of golden gorse on the hills, and quite a display of bunting on the big and little craft nosing against the black wharves. Streets were like corkscrews and houses like birds'-nests, all jaunty in the sun; and comfortable citi- page 424 zens going about their business were eager to greet Jermyn, who had been such a power in the papers before he refused to report any more of these fantastic parliamentary doings. Besides, as a gentleman whose books are not only read but bought by England, this little colony couldn't expect him to waste more time on her.

Perfumed notes (often on coloured paper with lace edges and occasionally a coronet) told him by each English mail of A Summer's Day or Young Lovers lying (bound in white vellum) with Mr Moore's “Melodies” and Mr Tennyson's “Poems” on the thick plush covers of centre tables in drawing-rooms, of the quantities of fair eyes weeping oceans over his heroines, the quantities of palpitating hearts that could be made happy for ever by his autograph. At first the caustic Jermyn in him revolted (though curiously pleased); had felt that a few blunt letters from males might supply a robuster stimulus. But he never got them, and the perfumed notes were so charming, and the cheques sent by his publishers so large….

So now Jermyn wrote for the dear ladies; gaining his knowledge of them at the bread-and-butter dances, very popular while Parliament was sitting; at archery meetings and croquet-parties and while riding on the hills behind Kelburn, in drawing-room tête-à-têtes, where females, discovering in him a mellower flavour than the harsh colonial vintage, continued crowning him until he now walked naturally like a conqueror.

Like a conqueror he came to Peregrine's bijou residence, where Sally's verbenas met him with a scarlet blush; and oleanders, arum lilies, roses, and little eager daisies handed him on with ripples of humility to the chintz drawing-room, in which Sally had so few of the fashionable baubles to fill her soul with, as other ladies did.

What does she fill it with, he thought, laying stick and hat on a side-table, looking round, delicately drawing page 425 off his gloves. On the mantel was a silver frame in which Jerry was grouped with his wife and baby in fashionable attitudes; another of Roddy, more Don Rodrigo than ever in wide sombrero and a cloak. Such a mess Roddy had made of his life, wandering everywhere when he might have written songs to live in white vellum covers on ladies' tables.

Frowning at Roddy, Jermyn did not hear Sally coming in, and so she stood a moment to control that little jump of the heart his presence always gave her. Mr Lovel was growing more like these new hard black steel nibs every year; yet Jermyn was continually more suggestive of a quill pen with a large bright feather writing in ever looser-flowing lines. I do think such silly things, thought Sally, feeling that this rather placid, rather florid Jermyn was really handsomer than ever—if you didn't remember a tragic Jermyn burning up with tempestuous brown eyes, tilting with sharp lance at all the trickeries and negations.

Jermyn turned, and his smile had a slight constraint. Sally's panniered gown of blue-and-buff checked alpaca was in the mode, and so was the ruffle at her white throat, and the little black silk pocket hanging from her waist; but she contrived to impart to them a kind of simplicity, a childishness which was so much the essential Sally that he was finding it increasingly hard to meet. Yes, assuredly she would cry….

“Oh, Jermyn. Is the English mail in? Did you hear about your book?”

“Certainly. I have heard a great deal. I have some letters and critiques to read you.”

“I'm so glad. Wait till I get my sewing. Wristbands for Jerry, his wife has so little time,” she explained, setting out the mother-of-pearl inlaid workbox, the little gold thimble, the embroidery scissors, the emery pin-cushion shaped like a strawberry. Roddy (extravagant boy) had had the thimble made from the first gold he got in Southland; Tiffy had sent the scissors (receiving a penny in page 426 exchange so as not to cut love); the strawberry was from Jerry. In some way it was easier to meet Jermyn's extraordinary correspondence, which pleased him so surprisingly, when supported by her children. “Now I'm ready,” she said, sitting (this simple Sally) sheer in the light from the window, which showed the grey in her hair, the delicate wrinkles round eyes and mouth.

“H'm,” said Jermyn, clearing his throat. “About twenty epistles from admiring readers. You won't want to hear them.”

“Of course I do.” Since Jermyn had apparently brought them he must not be disappointed, though Sally did wish some of the readers would find in Jermyn's books what must be there, even if she were not clever enough to find it herself … some reverberation of the tempests that had claimed him, some effluence of the spirit that compensates for all things, something of the sorrow and the conquests that she and he had shared.

But he seemed satisfied; so let him read them with his beautiful intonation, let him pause impressively on sentences that made her want to laugh, let him look up at the end of each of the turgid things for applause.

Oh, Jermyn, I don't understand, she always wanted to cry. Surely you can't like all this? But since he seemingly did, it must be Sally who was stupid, as she always was. These English ladies must know so much better than a Sally who had never been anywhere or done anything. “Oh, Jermyn, how vastly she does admire you. Oh, isn't that nice? I liked that bit too, Jermyn!”

At last Jermyn put the perfumed envelopes away and took out a long document like a will or something. “From my publishers,” he said.

“Oh, what do they say? It is sure to be very nice,” cried Sally, so glad to get rid of the sentimental ladies.

Jermyn got up and leaned against the mantel where he read the document right through without stopping, even to “Your obedient servants” at the end. When he page 427 stopped, his voice seemed to go on echoing in the quiet room as Sally had heard it echoing in her heart for over thirty years. She waited for it to cease. Perhaps presently it would really say something….

“Well?” said Jermyn, rather impatiently.

“Oh, Jermyn, how wonderful!”, (Even her lips knew by now what he wanted.) “Of course you must go. How much they admire you.”

“You see how it is?” He was moving the mantel ornaments about with his long fastidious fingers, never looking at her. “Now I have got my public, I must keep it, and there is no way of doing that but by getting into touch with life of the present day. Period work—as I have just read you—is going out of vogue. Unless I go to England I shall not keep my fame … and that my publishers think it considerable is clear by the terms they offer me.”

Were these pretty scented notes, these underlined gushings fame? Sally supposed so. Gentlemen (she would never get rid of that belief) knew so much more than women. Fame—any kind of fame—must be the proper thing for gentlemen to strive for. Even Mr Lovel was famous now, and only Sally knew how cross he got if his claret was not properly mulled.

“Why, Jermyn, of course you must go to England and be famous,” she said.

“I … I regret … naturally … leaving you …” muttered Jermyn, moving a vase of flowers in front of Roddy, whose smiling eyes had been such a help.

“But I shall be so proud. Oh,” cried Sally, openly dabbing her face since he saw the tears, “I'm only crying because I'm so proud. It is wonderful. You are being wasted out here.”

“I have always felt that.” He was conscious of a slight disappointment. This parting would make no sort of scene in a book. Not that he would ever have used it, of course, but an artist naturally assimilates everything.

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“Perhaps … some day you might come to me, Sally.”

Sally knew she was not very clever, but she had wits enough to meet that.

“I never could. Don't think of it. Think of all the fine ladies you'll be meeting. Those who write to you, you know. You ought to marry them … I mean one of them. They could help you so much. They understand.”

Did they? Did they understand as she did this Jermyn who, for all his cleverness, knew so little of women that the bits of her he was always putting in his books were only the superficial Sally, her silly little ways and sayings, the muddles she made of things. But of course, as a gentleman, he could not write about a Sally struggling always towards Eternity … especially as he didn't believe in it. So many years since last the glad trumpets had sounded in Eternity for Sally. Yet (in spite of the gushing ladies) she couldn't help hoping to find Jermyn there. He was smiling now, looking pleased.

“Well, they do seem to understand, don't they? The letters they write…. I am vastly beholden to them. As an artist…. But we shall always be good friends, Sally?”

“Oh, yes.” They had been good friends for so long now. The lover Jermyn had been gone for so long now. “Always good friends, Jermyn.”

Peregrine came in, and for once both were glad to see him. Sally ran for wine and cake. Mr Lovel always liked wine and cake for his guests, and Jermyn was a guest now. “Jermyn's going to England,” she cried. Anything would be easier than hearing him say it.

“Probably you are better out of this country,” said Peregrine, sitting down stiffly. “Not claret, my dear. I would prefer Burgundy.”

Burgundy (he felt) gave just the extra fillip necessary to a man who, having lived through the tumults of 'seventy-five and 'seventy-six, was finding this year of 'seventy-seven almost too much for him. It was surprising page 429 that parliaments could continue to show such unabated and alarming energy.

“How is Grey?” asked Jermyn, sipping his wine with relish. The simple comforts of humanity are so necessary after scenes with women.

Grey, said Peregrine acidly, was behaving as might have been expected of a person who had left gardening on Kawau Island to fling himself into politics as a private member in order to fight against the abolition of the provinces. “A dozen provincial parliaments kept up by a population of four hundred thousand. Ridiculous. Naturally they had to go,” he said, staring into his glass as though he saw the provinces drowning there like flies.

“Certainly getting rid of them has made the central parliament more powerful,” agreed Jermyn, yawning a little. These colonial mare's nests were less than nothing to a man with his feet already setting on larger ways.

And Sally had once actually suggested that he should write about New Zealand. There is nothing to write of, he had told her. No history, no tradition, nothing of the least importance to anyone outside itself. England takes not the slightest interest in all her little rag-tags of Empire, he had told a Sally asking if they couldn't all be joined together in one large splendid cloak. You did write about her once, said Sally, who would never understand that young men will be foolish and waste their powers.

Peregrine continued: “Representation by provinces merely made bedlam. One might have only one hundred members and another sixteen hundred. How could any central parliament possibly adjudicate all their wants? Scandalous nonsense. But Grey is an old woman.” Thus he disposed of the provincial parliaments as he emptied his glass, and ignored the impassioned eloquence of Grey, who had made history by forming New Zealand's first Opposition and was still scampering up and down the country making speeches … which was more than indecent in a man of nearly seventy.

page 430

“I wonder why old women are always thought to be so stupid,” murmured Sally, but the gentlemen disdained to reply to anything so obvious.

Peregrine said: “It is well we have Atkinson as Premier.” (Since you weren't chosen yourself, thought Jermyn.) “Naturally he got his following through his wartime service, and possibly at this juncture he can do more for the country with his plain bluntness than another with Grey's brilliant rhetoric.”

“We haven't such another.” Jermyn got up. All those dainty missives to be answered, as well as the publishers…. But Grey and his Opposition had done something. Besides rousing Auckland to the extent of wanting to go to war under them, they had scotched the religious side of the new Free and Compulsory Education Bill. So schools were to be entirely secular, and Peregrine's eyes became quite glassy with fury when he spoke of that. To a man who read morning prayers every day of his life, and would (one felt) even if there were no more than a canary-bird to listen, secular education was Grey's crowning crime.

“An eternal disgrace to any country. No prayers to open the schools with. Purely a vendetta of revenge against abolition. I always suspected Grey.”

Yet you upheld him for long enough, thought Jermyn. Peregrine would always uphold governors and parliaments, no matter what their colour.

“He's a great man, though. He fights—and how he fights—for what he believes in,” said Jermyn, going away with his courteous good-byes, his kind smile to Sally. Always friends, eh? it seemed to say and a something not quite dead in Sally nearly cried: No, no. Enemies is better than being friends for you and me, Jermyn. Friends so often forget each other….

“I have papers to look over in the library,” said Mr Lovel. “Pray see that I am not disturbed, my dear.”

To Sally it seemed that this quiet room could never be page 431 disturbed again, never be anything but empty again. She took up her sewing; but the light was fading too fast for fading eyes. “I must get glasses,” she murmured, going to pick a dead rose out of the silver vase on the table. Such a pity all lovely things must die….