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Promenade

[section]

Although ladies intent on shopping came round to Commercial Bay by rowboat, there was no help but legs (which mustn't be mentioned, however they ached) to get one up the steep twisting little streets. Caroline made heavy weather of them with her five long fashionable petticoats and full plum-colour poplin skirts sweeping up quite a tornado of dust and refuse as she bowed right and left, just like royalty.

Here were smart officers saluting, Captain Macrae in full Highland rid, with his great brooch like a semaphore in the brilliant light; Lord Calthorpe (such an exquisite that he wore a tartan shawl in the hottest weather and looking quite brisked up since his engagement); Sir Winston in yachting costume, his straw hat floating a blue ribbon and his old green umbrella showing the spikes. Even newly-arrived immigrants in smocks and chin-whiskers, and Corny Fleete with no waistcoat beneath his tussore coat, received their share of Caroline's graciousness.

“One must be kind to all,” she said to Sophia carrying the heavy basket. Surely the world needed kindness in these terrible days, with top-hats becoming daily more napless, and elastic-side boots (the only elegant wear for gentlemen) having an unhappy habit of sagging round the ankles, and Suchong at sixteen shillings and more the pound … although one could help out considerably with leaves of the native tea-tree, which must be medicinal since they tasted so unpleasant.

She stopped to speak to Jermyn lounging outside the page 147 little Chronicle office like any other young fop. Jermyn, said Caroline's maid, had been censored or something at the Institute last night, and so one must be kind. Besides he was really very handsome although looking wilder than before he went away.

“I trust you were not seasick on your voyage, Jermyn. You look unwell,” she said, passing on to Mr Brown's, where you could buy a bright Belgian candle for a farthing, and nudging Sophia to look away because Mrs Pinshon was there. Long ago ladies had agreed not to recognize each other when shopping in the cheaper places, meeting directly after in the street as though they had not encountered for months. So gentility was kept up very convincingly, and on washing-days all blinds were drawn as a polite hint to callers.

“One must have biscuits for a dinner-party. These broken ones are cheaper. I could say you fell down with the basket, Sophia,” said Caroline.

Outside, they met Sally with Tiffany. And there was Nick Flower, looking so rough in old white ducks and short trader's jacket that Caroline didn't feel she need be kind to him. But, most surprisingly, he stopped, pulling off his old hat and asking if he might speak privately to Mrs Lovel. Sally stepped aside; came back presently, prettily flushed under her blue bonnet.

“Caroline, will you be so kind as to take Tiffany home?” she said, and walked off with Nick Flower, accepting his hand to help her over holes and tussocks.

“Well, I never did!” exclaimed Caroline with so much meaning that Tiffany said defiantly: “She'll just have gone to be good to somebody. She's always doing that.”

“My poor child, how little you know of life, and I pray you never will,” said Caroline, hurrying on the little girls in the hope of seeing where Sally was going. But she lost her on the water-front. An assignation. A liaison. And with that creature! What a mercy Caroline lived near page 148 enough to watch Sally. Probably Peregrine had put her there for that very purpose. Poor Peregrine. But she would help him all she could, and discover everything before she told him.

“Home,” she said majestically to the Maori boatman, whom she had put into livery before Peregrine thought of doing such a thing. What kind of home had poor Peregrine now? Indeed, the wickedness of the world was beyond belief….

Sally, so used to ministering at Kororareka, had not hesitated when Nick Flower told her about Kati. “I have locked her in my office … and there's the fellow waiting in his dirty little lugger in the stream. If anyone can stop her it's you, Mrs Lovel. The man's married,” said Flower, stern as ever, yet with anxious eyes. For long Sally had known that the big awkward child meant a good deal to Nick Flower.

“I'll do what I can,” she promised, and did it to some present purpose. But how can a girl like that ever keep good, she thought, pitifully; silent as the boatman rowed her home, and standing silent on the little Official Bay jetty long after he had moored the boat and gone away up the path. Of a morning ladies in second-best gloves and shawls did business here with the marketing Maoris, exchanging blankets and petticoats for so many kits of kumeras and onions, so many great yellow gourds and bundles of Indian corn and flax-kits full of ripe peaches.

To-night there was only old Rangitoto across the harbour, rising from the blue with the misty bloom of plums. Only a great ship going out with all its sails set, laden with ox-horns and ambergris, green hides, casks of oil and tallow, and kauri spars. The Witchcraft, perhaps, this stately ship, bearing a grim Salem witch and broomstick at her figurehead. Or the Ocean Pride. Or that fleet sailer The Chariot of Fame. Such achings they brought to exiled hearts, these bright and gallant queens of distance; racing in their whiteness against the sun, furling their sails like page 149 homing gulls for so brief a space in the purple twilight harbours of the world, growing yearly in beauty, grace, and speed since there was now so much wool to carry from Australia, so many cargoes from New Zealand. Yet, with all that beauty, men still did ugly things.

The cluck-cluck of oars sounded faint like a ghost rowing round Britomart Point. But it was no ghost rowing into the jetty through a green fragrance fanned by the wings of home-going birds. Oh, the strange lightening of the sky so that the dim West turned gold with the coming of Jermyn….

The strangeness of Jermyn stepping quietly ashore, quietly taking her hand, walking in silence with her up to the walled garden among the cherry-trees. The strangeness of walking securely as a wife with Jermyn along the rustling cabbage-tree track into the garden. Somewhat different, this, from making the virtuous promenade with Mr Lovel. Presently, thought Sally, her heart beating fit to choke her, they would begin to run and jump and sing like children waving glad hands, weaving measures….

Under the dark cherries Jermyn stopped suddenly, twisting her to him. Then with a queer roughness, which was so unlike courteous Jermyn, he took her in his arms. If she could die now, she thought with closed eyes under his kisses. If they could both die, going into Eternity without the weary years between. Darien would look after Tiffany, God, her heart pleaded, and she can darn her own stockings nicely. Tiffany wouldn't miss me much if she had Darien…. Jermyn was holding her off and the world coming back. God had not heard.

“How long is this to go on?” he demanded, harsh, abrupt.

“What, Jermyn?”

“Don't juggle with me. I can't stand it. I've come back for you, Sally. You're mine now. Not his.”

“I … I think I've been yours for ever, Jermyn. I page 150 think we must have had other lives … together. Sometimes I seem to remember…. This won't be so hard, dear, once we get used to it.”

“Used to what?”

“To … to”—oh, how difficult men always made things —“to waiting, Jermyn.”

“For what?”

“For … for the next life. I know God means us to be happy there.”

“He hasn't concerned himself much with our happiness here.” Then he took her face gently between his hands and turned it up to his long gaze. She held her breath lest the sweet enchantment of his eyes, of his strong hard palms against her skin should be gone. “Come away with me, my dear love,” he said tenderly.

She freed herself with a cry. “Jermyn! Oh, Jermyn! You don't know what you're saying.”

“Don't I? I've had time to think, haven't I? If there's any wrong in this it's yours for continuing to live with Peregrine when you love me. It is your wrong, Sally.”

“Oh, no, no. Please, Jermyn. I married him …”

“He married you before you were sixteen. And he ought to be hung for it. I've come back for you, Sally, and I don't mean to let you go again.”

“But, Jermyn … Oh, there are not the words,” cried Sally, entangled among the immensities. “Jermyn, we couldn't be happy … doing such wrong. I … I think some day we may be happy … just waiting. Don't you?”

“No, I don't. Good Lord! What a woman's idea.” He began to speak rapidly, with that same suggestion of suppressed storm that was so frightening. “Peregrine has never needed you. He's a self-contained soul rotating entirely on its own axis. He has never loved you and you'll always be outside his life.”

“I … I know,” she faltered, trembling.

“You have never loved him. You have never really lived.” Oh, what a strange terrible Jermyn staring at her page 151 like a Denunciation out of the Bible. “Lying by his side in the nights it is me you think of … long for.” Now he had his arms round her again, his cheek to hers. “My dear and only love!” he whispered. “I'll teach you what it means to be frightened with joy.”

Surely this dark weakness upon her must be death. But one doesn't die so easily. There would be fifty years … fifty. She began to cry, trying to make him understand.

“Jermyn, don't you see … this life don't really matter so much when we shall have Eternity. I always keep telling myself that. Oh,” she cried, feeling herself becoming a perfect fountain of tears, “do you think I will be able to pin a buttonhole in your coat there, Jermyn?”

“A buttonhole?” he said, frowning.

She shook her head, trying to smile. “You won't understand. I think of such silly things….”

“You have only one thing to think of now,” he said, impatiently cutting through this raffle of woman's words. “By all God's laws”—but who, he thought, was he to call thus boldly on Divinity?—“by all God's laws, you are mine, and I shall make you mine. Your heart cannot refuse me, and soon your body won't….”

She gave an inarticulate cry at that, running from him up the garden like a pale moth in the gloaming. So the moon coming radiant up the sky saw only a young man in mulberry-colour coat treading angrily among the dropped cherries.

Sally ran into the house where everything seemed to look at her with alien eyes. She ran into her bedroom, past the great dark four-poster where she slept each night with Mr Lovel, and dragged the heavy curtains away from the window. Air. I must have air, she thought, forgetting that she had just come from it and sinking on her knees since legs were so suddenly weak.

The Holy Immolation of Matrimony seemed so near and Eternity so very far. And, for all her brave words, how did she really know that Mr Lovel would not re- page 152 quire her to make the virtuous promenade with him there also? If he did … and the Bible saying that wives must always be in subjection to their husbands…. Why did I ever love at all? she cried in common with all her pale sisters who have loved to their sorrow.

In the dimness those worndown old volcanoes round Auckland were not spouting flames as they should have been. The flames (she felt, terrified) must be in herself, burning her up with love for Jermyn. Dizzily she felt her spirit going up and up with Jermyn … the man who had evoked for her this imperishable magic, this glad pain; who had swept away that vague Eternity where one did things for ever with harps and given her instead bright surety of large serene comforting Eternities—trampling, glorious Eternities with the star of joy upon their fore-heads.

“I can teach you what it is to be frightened with joy….” Oh, cruel Jermyn, to use words which conjured up such sublimity of fear. A splendid fear which she had never known, which (it seemed) women could know, hearing love as a silver trumpet in the night bidding them wake to rapture, hearing the bridegroom's call: Oh, come, my beloved, my Rose of Sharon….

Sally huddled down on the floor. What was commerce with far-off Eternities to that?

A smell of burning cloth drifted through the house. Reality, having no patience with the vapourings of women, was reasserting itself. Sally got up and went out to the kitchen, where Tiffany was ironing furiously by the light of a tallow dip.

“Oh, mamma, I wanted to get done as a surprise,” she cried. “I'm afraid I've scorched something….”

Her tawny curls stood out like a halo. Her sun-browned little face with the wide eyes was wistfully eager. Sally put the curls back from the hot forehead with a gentle hand.

page 153

“Never mind, my woman-child. It is so easy to scorch things,” she said.