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Promenade

[section]

Abrupt occurrences go along with pioneering, and visions long mellowed by gestation have a habit of finally confronting their parents with horrid fact. Facts in Auckland, where Lovels and other refugees spent many months dividing and reuniting like protoplasm in the small houses of harried ladies short of everything but kindness, became actually coarse, presenting less privacy and considerably more complications than the Beach.

Caroline was the first to achieve a house of her own, since the whole community lent a hand there, and (although it could never be described to ladies in England) it possessed the supreme merit of raising its four rooms and gabled attic in Official Bay, exclusive home of the gentry.

“Of course everyone will call on Lady Lovel and I always think it so right to be prepared,” said Caroline, putting on her best lemon kid gloves and sitting in state for callers as soon as she had a chair to sit on. Sally and her family floated longer, to be compensated by a fine new house which Peregrine imported from Sydney in sections and thus turned Caroline purple with envious anger. He filled all its ample spaces with Brussels carpets, long mirrors and tall carved chairs that (having been for so long interred in packing-cases) looked at each other with an air of never having met before.

“It was kind of John to let Peregrine have some of our family portraits, Sally,” said Caroline, inspecting gold-framed ancestors on pale blue garlanded wall-paper. “I always think he is too kind. Such a pity your walls are not in the fashionable red flock. All my principal rooms page 77 are papered in flock.” Indeed, Caroline was finding it very hard to be civil to Sally; and when Peregrine called his house Lovel Hall, for a whole month she did not try to be.

Sally had other troubles besides Caroline. There were the children always being Maoris in kitchen mats out in the back yard and trying to tattoo each other with oyster-shells, until Peregrine discovered that Kororareka had not been burned down a moment too soon and brought governess ladies to supervise the making of pothooks and hangers with sharp sticks in boxes of damp sand—paper being far too valuable for children.

But these ladies came and went in an agitated cloud since the boys, they said delicately, were too experimental. Yet sticking pins in ladies' legs and putting dead mice in their chairs was not experiment. The boys knew what would happen. And it always did, even to the thrashings which Mr Lovel (who prided himself on his justice) daily administered to all his offspring. For if you cannot whip children into the right path how in the world can you expect them to get there?

Then there was Darien. Since Auckland, being entirely military and respectable, did not suffer young ladies to walk abroad unattended Darien at once put on her new green bonnet (with a little white tulle frill inside) and set out to teach Auckland the worth of that convention.

“Am I a stalking pestilence?” she demanded, looking so delightful with her masses of auburn ringlets and the delicious pinks-and-whites of her provocative charming face with its firm little chin that Sally almost went on her knees with pleadings.

“Indeed, darling, you are too handsome … and it is not proper. With a gentleman….”

“Where am I to get the gentleman if I don't go look for him, you owl?” demanded Darien, feeling that Sally was not all a sister might expect. With no Graham boys, and with Jermyn and all the other handsome young bucks page 78 gone to Heke's war or to Wellington, where other Maoris were becoming very lively, Auckland, like Sally, was not at all what one might expect either. Darien felt herself wasted; and, since Major Henry had now told her all about Lady Hamilton, where was the use of being like her if Darien couldn't find a Nelson? And Auckland was a horrid nasty little town, no better than a puling infant for all its airs.

Desirable as the dawn and stepping like Atalanta in pantalettes, Darien went through the muddle of manuka, flax-bushes, tree-ferns, and tall trees careering over hills and up and down gullies where small houses sat on their haunches here and there like lost dogs. Britomart Hill had the barracks … and also a high wall which not even an active girl could climb. But there was still Commercial Bay, sacred to the gentlemen and business.

All kinds of flotsam in these steep little narrow streets where nobody appeared to know that all the Lovel connection was Quality and to be respected as such. Draggled women snatched away Darien's shawl, tucking it under their rags. Drunken sailors tried to snatch a kiss. Bullockdrays bumping over rocks and stones had drivers who said things that surprised even her. In Shortland Street with its rickety little shops shawled ladies on the arms of top-hatted gentlemen glanced at her and looked away. Gentlemen looked too long. She felt uneasily conscious that she might be a pestilence after all.

Indeed, New Zealand's capital was stiff with military etiquette; well-schooled ladies rarely emitted a squeak when being helped across puddles and tussocks or even when negotiating the highly alarming foot-bridges spanning the Rivulet galloping down steep Queen Street to the muddy foreshore. Dangers, pigs, dogs, goats, smells, sweating men wheeling unsavoury barrows, all were superbly ignored … but never so completely as a girl walking alone … the brazen huzzy!

Peregrine, coming off the little wharf where Corny, page 79 Flower, and other enterprising traders had walked their little offices out on stilts to invite deliberating ships, saw a young girl in a green bonnet outside the Queen's Head tavern with a crowd of Maori lumpers and grinning sailors in flat glazed hats about her. For a minute he couldn't believe his eyes, and when he did he couldn't trust his tongue. Silently he tucked Darien's arm under his and took her home, guarding his breath till the door was shut.

Darien (who, for the first time in her life had suspected herself frightened) knew it now. One don't mind being called indecent. Peregrine would have called Lady Hamilton that. But one does mind being told that one will be cut by the whole town … especially with a weeping Sally to corroborate it. Never to be asked to routs or balls or kettledrums. Never a chance to catch a beautiful young buck…. “Oh, what a horrid wicked town,” cried Darien. “I know it will make me wicked too.”

Peregrine intimated that she was that already and went off in a stew to consult Major Henry. The Major guffawed. “The damned spirited little baggage! Do the right thing by her, boy, and in a few years she'll be the talk of the town.”

“She is that now,” said Peregrine, very icy.

“Not she! No one knows her … a chit in half-mast frocks and pantalettes. Seclude her. Seclude her until she gets sense and I'll wager she does us all credit.”

Peregrine remarked that one might as easily seclude a hurricane. He was really upset and his hair looked as though Darien had grabbed it. The Major considered. “She must be schooled. There's a Mrs Williams … Symposium for Young Ladies … just opened up Karangahape Road. Strict as the doose, I fancy, but with all the elegancies. Send her there.”

“I—ah—she might refuse to go.”

The Major nearly whistled. By the Lord Harry, the young miss had got even the great Peregrine shaky. page 80 “Let me talk to her,” he said, scenting a pleasurable interview.

Darien, her nose swollen with furious weeping, received her first balm when the Major winked at her over his high gill-collar.

“Well, young lady, you've scandalized us all and if I were a bit younger, damn it, I'd marry you myself.”

“You can,” said Darien eagerly. Hadn't some stuffy Sir William been the way to Lord Nelson?

“Er …” The Major sat down with a moment's pity for Mrs Williams. “No, no, my dear; you have better than that ahead if you'll only listen to me.”

It was a terrible listening and she cried until one could have wrung out both her handkerchief and the Major's. But thank the Lord for her sense of drama, her motherwit. Seclusion for a year or so; absorbing all the graces, the subtleties of a young lady—and then to burst on the town, bring it to her feet…. “By the Lord Harry, my dear, you can do it if ever a girl could. But you must sharpen your weapons. Sharpen your weapons.”

“The horrid place will be bigger then? More military?”

“Lord, yes. It will be….” To get Darien into her nunnery was there anything he wouldn't promise? Swarms of pomatumed young bucks breathing adoration, breathing slaughter against their kind … you couldn't lay the butter on too thick for such an infernal young egotist as Darien….“And for heaven's sake learn how to use your hands. A fan would be no better than a warming-pan to you now. Egad, I've seen ladies….”

The Major enlarged, went away inflating his chest. Gad, who said he had forgotten how to handle the Sex? Good wine must be matured, and there was good red wine here. The girl would go to her penance like a young knight into battle. “I fancy,” murmured the Major, “that I had better see Mrs Williams myself.” Women, even the best of 'em, were only good when they had no page 81 chance to be otherwise … and who could blame the dear creatures since they had so few chances?