II

Caroline's dinner-parties, one felt, were seldom a success, and because she had the impertinence to give one in celebration of Darien's engagement before Peregrine even thought of it this one promised to be less succssful than usual. Yet Lord Calthorpe, having once let himself go, had so heartily succumbed to the sensation that Darien felt more like Lady Hamilton than ever, wearing her diamond engagement ring and her lover's diamond locket to the dinner and using her fan to such purpose that surely Jermyn could not help being jealous.

Jermyn had come with inner rebellions. Up and down the dark harbour he had rowed himself into exhaustion last night; cursing the day that he was born, the strange fierce powers that drive a man against his conscience; determined to leave Sally for ever and yet knowing that he must come again like a moth to the light.

A thing denied has ever the greater value, and to-night Sally in her old blue gown rich with embossed flowers, withdrawn into that sweet remote enchantment which was part of her, undoubtedly had more value than any man's bright honour. An inscrutable idol, Sally, sitting beyond that hideous epergne piled with glowing peaches; a cruel idol to whom the earth itself brought flowery offerings which she flung on her gown and forgot … as she would soon forget Jermyn.

Jermyn, writhing with his misery, looked round in hatred on white shoulders and gay scarves, on all the badly-cleaned silver with which Caroline disguised the sparseness of her food, on Caroline making more than usual efforts to keep conversation on a high and ethical plane because she always found so much everywhere that needed bettering. Let her try her ethics on me, by Gad, Jermyn thought, cutting his meat fiercely.

page 154

What with the silver and the ancestors on the walls and her puce braided satin—one could do so much to freshen shabby gowns with a little more braiding—Caroline felt herself justified in the remark that she always thought the English the most civilized of all races.

“Well, don't y'know, I wish you'd define civilization, Lady Lovel,” said Calthorpe, blinking over his high stock.

“Delicacy forbids,” said Jermyn, determined to be difficult.

“I should just think it did,” said Darien, remembering what civilized people could say and do.

“I always think,” declared Caroline, who was so quickly out of her depths that one wondered if she ever was in them, “that one should say what one thinks.”

“Even if one thinks what one shouldn't say?” asked Darien, glancing at Calthorpe, who looked so insignificant beside beautiful haughty Jermyn that if it wasn't for the diamonds and the envy of all her friends one simply couldn't bear him.

“Oh, my dear! I hope I never think such things!” said Caroline.

“What things?” demanded Jermyn. “The perspicacity of ladies in knowing what they shouldn't think before they think it commands my constant admiration.”

For the first time Caroline wished the gentlemen wouldn't leave the whole burden of conversation on her since it was impossible just yet to say what she really thought about Sally. She struggled back to the ethical plane. “The thing I always think is how proud we should be of our religion because every part of this country has been first colonized by churches.”

“Oh, quite,” agreed Jermyn. “I have noticed that people are always prouder of their limitations than of their achievements.” (That drew a look from Sally, soft, reproachful. Are you proud of your limitations? it seemed to say. Gad! If she provoked him like that! What had Flower said? A woman always despises a man if….)

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“England should have left us alone,” said Corny, who unfortunately had to be asked since he was one of the few rich men in the town.

“Oh, but,” cried Caroline, really scandalized, “England can never let anyone alone. She must colonize. It is her Destiny.”

“She thinks it is,” amended Jermyn.

“If Grey—” began Major Henry, rather troubled by Jermyn.

Everybody sat up. Grey seemed a queer pet for the gods to have made; but it was surely through their intervention that England had not only sent him five hundred time-expired soldiers to settle with their families round Auckland so that he could sleep safe of nights and allowed him to use hundreds of Her Majesty's forces to build walls and make streets—not only that but England had lately clapped a knighthood on his stiff head. So Governor Sir George Grey walked with Vulcan and Zeus (not even the Chronicle dared associate him with Venus), and once he was safely in the conversation he could be trusted to choke out everything else.

“‘Hail, mighty monarch!’ “began Sir Winston who had just remembered something he had been trying to think of for weeks:

Hail, mighty monarch whom desert alone
Would without birthright raise thee to the throne.
Thy virtues shine particularly nice
Ungloomed with a confinity to vice …

“That was said of George the Fourth, I believe.”

“You find our Governor's virtues particularly nice, don't you, Peregrine?” inquired Jermyn, peering past a candelabra upheld by Cupids round whose plump middles Caroline had tied chaste bows of pink ribbon.

Jermyn at a dinner-table, considered Peregrine, was apt to make people feel that they had been taking violent exercise unduly prolonged. Possibly he was drunk again, page 156 though who could get drunk on this wine…. Peregrine said with dignity, ignoring the fact that Grey had publicly snubbed him over the gold reward business: “It is under Governor Grey that Auckland district has arisen to the astonishing record of four thousand houses and over a million sheep—”

This was the way Caroline's parties always went, thought Sally, very thankful when Caroline began gathering up eyes round the table, gathering gloves, handkerchief, and feather-fan.

“Oh, la,” she cried, being as voluptuous as she could without indelicacy, “I think we will leave politics to the gentlemen.”

“Yes,” said Darien, flinging a mocking glance at Jermyn who would not accept it. “Let us leave them to the gentlemen who always know what to do.”

Jermyn, at any rate, didn't know what to do, and so Darien must teach him since if his temper to-night didn't mean jealousy she would like to know what did. So she peeped at her radiant self in all Caroline's mirrors, and sat down presently to sing for the delectation of Jermyn, whiskered officers, and other lesser fowl.

Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny bonny bride,
Busk ye, my winsome marrow.
Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny bonny bride,
And let us leave the Braes of Yarrow….

So sang Darien, ready to leave them to-morrow with Jermyn—taking Calthorpe's diamonds with her of course, since she certainly needed some recompense for what she was undergoing there. Being engaged was not all the fun it should be, and perhaps Jermyn wouldn't be either. But probably nothing was, thought Darien, feeling the necessity for philosophy in any dealings with gentlemen.

In the dining-room with its florid flock paper gentlemen (soon almost as florid with argument) were unbuttoning waistcoats and tempers, with old Barnes declaring that page 157 this would be a better world if only men kept their brains in their bellies, like the animals.

Sir Winston suddenly rediscovered Kororareka. “Our sacred fane, sirs. There the rude forefathers of our colony began … building the first boat, the first church, the first plough. The first white child born there; the first sermon, cricket-match…. Paths of glory leading not to the grave, but to….”

“Penury and Grey,” said the Major, brushing snuff from the orange velvet of his waistcoat—though who could be a dandy in these days?

But the gentlemen, who had quite enough of penury, could never have enough of Grey who, abetted by the Colonial Office, had lately crowned his infamy by setting aside the sub-governors of New Ulster and New Munster and all the infant legislative administrations. Conditions, he declared, were too complicated for separate controls. So he made himself complete lord of New Zealand, while gentlemen, who had not yet had the chance to administer anything, daily imperilled their immortal souls with blasphemy, especially after dinner.

Peregrine never blasphemed. He had had a bigger fight than he expected to get on the Common Council (welcomed with a salute of twelve guns from Fort Britomart, to say nothing of flourishes with bugles) but he still hoped for a seat on Grey's little pocket Council. For all Grey's wry political grimaces and stiffneckedness he must look round presently for men of worth.

“It ain't right that all hay for regimental horses should have to be imported,” growled old Barnes. “I cud grow tons on that land o' mine … if I cud get it surveyed an' use it.”

“You will never get it surveyed, sir,” said a stout gentleman with convictions. “Busby has been fighting for his surveys from the beginning, and so have we all. No Maori will allow surveys on land unless we can prove a page 158 clear title; and how can there be clear titles when a fellow can upset a sale because of a fire lit under a tree where his grandmother was buried forty years ago?”

“That blasted Waitangi Treaty!”

“‘The venom still remains, And the poxed nation feels it in their brains’—Dryden,” said Sir Winston, very pleased that he could recall the author of those venomous lines.

“Hay from abroad is often musty too,” said Captain O'Reilly, grimly.

“What,” demanded Major Henry, who had unlocked John's cellar some time before, “do that infernal C'lonial Office … Downin' Street duffers … know of us? Ain't we the country … body, blood, and bones. Were we not … did we not get on damned well with the Maoris before Annexation? Gentlemen,” he cried, fired with the notion and splashing brandy in all directions, “I give you No Annexation.”

It was a magnificent idea, only more than twelve years too late. Someone pointed this out, reducing the Major to tears, so that he laid his grey head down among the broken meats.

“Bloody country's goin' to the perishin' bitches,” he mourned. And here no one contradicted him.